Introducing Vakt Global’s new blockchain platform designed to bring new efficiencies to the global oil market. Vakt Global is a consortium venture comprised of industry heavy-hitters like Royal Dutch Shell and BP looking to innovate the old ways of doing business with a decentralized platform for crude oil trading.
Raw material trading has long relied on slow pen-and-paper processes that inch sluggishly across time zones. This has been the price of doing business in the oil game. Contracts, letters of credit, certificates, verification, and invoices are shuffled around between intermediaries and third-parties to try in an attempt to create secure transactions. Now BP, Royal Dutch Shell, ABN Amro, ING, Societe Generale, Gunvor, Mercuria and Koch Supply & Trading, and Equinor have joined forces to eradicate these antiquated process and are set to launch a faster and more secure platform that uses distributed ledger technology (DLT). The consortium was formed just a year ago this past month.
The VAKT platform plans to serve five North Sea crude oil fields, Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk, and Troll, according to a company tweet (Nov. 29). This is where the first enterprsie grade blockchain solution for oil and gas will be piloted with future plans for territory expansion.
Their overarching goal and vision for VAKT according to a recent announcement is to,
“lead the migration of all forms of energy transaction data to the blockchain, improving data quality, further strengthening security and increasing the speed of settlements industry-wide, while reducing the cost for industry participants.”
The platform is now live, but is only available to VAKT members. It has plans to release to more companies this January 2019.
