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Three of the world’s largest commodities traders have described 2025 as a difficult year, with one executive warning that the industry would have to get used to “smaller rewards” than in the past.

Vitol chief executive Russell Hardy said his company, the world’s leading oil trader, had endured a “tough year, with lots of nitty gritty required”, while his counterpart at Gunvor, Torbjorn Tornqvist, said it had been “hard work, for little . . . or a little less”.

Ben Luckock, head of oil trading at Trafigura, said the company had been able to “cobble together a decent result out of a difficult year”, as traders reduced their appetite for risk amid political uncertainty in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The three men were speaking at the Energy Intelligence Forum in London, where they suggested lower volatility in energy prices had left little opportunity for the outsized returns that commodities traders had enjoyed in recent years.

The most notable example was the energy crisis unleashed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, which resulted in bumper profits for the traders who rerouted supplies to Europe. 

“It’s no secret that 2022-23 was an exceptional year for the industry,” Tornqvist said. “Trading margins in the market are obviously much slimmer than they were”.

“You have to get used to the smaller rewards, try to look at it collectively and try to diversify,” he continued, adding that the political uncertainty this year was “hard to read”. 

Gunvor in August reported that net profits in the first half of the year were down nearly 71 per cent to $120.8mn. “Given the market turmoil, Gunvor decided to adopt a more conservative risk approach, focusing on limiting downside risk,” the company said. 

At Vitol, there was no outstanding performance in any one department this year, according to Hardy.

“When people pick over the bones at the end of the year, there aren’t going to be any standouts or highlights. It’s not like gas trading was great, power trading was bad, LNG trading was good. Everything required hard work and organisation and courage to collect earnings,” he said. 

Full-year profits at Trafigura are likely to be buoyed by the company’s metals business, with the price of copper, silver and gold all soaring to new highs this year. Trafigura’s chief executive Richard Holtum said this week that the company had “an extremely good result” because of the “diversity of our business”. 

International oil companies such as Shell and BP have also had a difficult time trading oil and gas markets in 2025. BP said in its third-quarter trading statements on Tuesday that gas trading had been “average” and oil trading weak, although Shell said it expected both divisions to fare better than in the previous quarter.