Reuters news reports indicate that Aramco’s Energy Ventures division has bought invested $5 million, which will be used by Vakt to advance the platform and start catering to the Asian market.
Along with the investment, the Saudi Aramco’s associate concern, involved in oil trading, will start using the Vakt platform.
The platform is presently accessible in Forties, North Sea Brent, Oseberg, Troll and Ekofisk crude oil markets.
Notably, Aramco has considerable market share in those regions. Aramco Trading intends to increase its trading volumes using the blockchain powered platform.
The Vakt platform concentrates on post-trade handling of physical energy trades.
The platform simplifies trade entry to settlement by terminating paper based procedures and text book accounting habits.
Hans Middelthon, managing director of SAEV Europe stated “VAKT has demonstrated that their platform has the potential to digitize what is currently a very manual process.”
The adoption of blockchain guarantees a “single source of truth” for both transacting parties i.e. buyers and sellers, saved on an unalterable, distributed ledger, as per Vakt.
Back in December 2018, Vakt unveiled its trading platform, with initial restriction on North Sea markets.
The company was established in 2017 by an association of industry chiefs, including that of BP and Shell, who were also the first to start utilizing the platform.
From then onwards, the platform enrolled several oil and gas giants such as Total, India’s Reliance Enterprises and Chevron.
Saudi Aramco, the largest oil producing enterprise across the globe, has earlier taken stakes in several blockchain companys through its associate firms.
In May 2019, Aramco took part in a $6 million financing round for American blockchain firm Data Gumbo Corp.