Oil company Vitol became the largest company in the Netherlands

Vitol’s win, at No. 1 Top 500 Companies, partly due to the speed with which the oil company operates. The energy transition is making Vitol think about new products.

Every day, about eight million barrels of oil pass through Vitol, accounting for 8 percent of global oil trade. They are transported on our own ships, stored in Vitol-built tanks, processed into gasoline and other products at our own refineries, and sold through our own filling stations.

“Our company hasn’t changed much since its inception,” said Russell Hardy, 57, CEO of Vitol. ‘We have a telex from 1966 that says our first sale: an oil cargo up the Rhine by inland vessel.’

Vitol is one of the unknown companies in the high end areas First 500. In part, that’s because it trades with other companies, not consumers. But Vitol has always had a reserved public profile. Within six years of its founding, the company already had a turnover of 1.2 billion guilders, but in newspaper reports from that time, Vitol pretends that this is completely normal.

Founded in 1966 by two Dutchmen

Vitol was founded in 1966 by two Dutchmen, Henk Vytor (Vitol: Wittor oil) and Jack Dedeker. Rotterdam was an important transit port for oil and coal for Germany, and the Two Thirty were involved: they bought oil products from Rotterdam refineries and sold them in Germany.

It turned out to be the perfect time and place to begin. It was a time when many oil producing countries sidelined the Western oil companies in their country and nationalized their holdings. In 1973, Arab countries also significantly reduced their oil production, leading to an oil boycott against the United States and the Netherlands.