Table Of ContentTHE WORLD FOR SALE
T HE WORLD FOR SALE
M oney, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the
Earth’s Resources
Javier Blas and Jack Farchy
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© Javier Blas and Jack Farchy 2021
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CONTENTS
Introduction: The Last Swashbucklers 1
1. The Pioneers 22
2. The Godfather of Oil 43
3. The Last Bank in Town 72
4. Paper Barrels 100
5. The Fall of Marc Rich 117
6. The Biggest Closing-Down Sale in History 133
7. Communism with Capitalist Influences 151
8. Big Bang 175
9. Petrodollars and Kleptocrats 197
10. Destination Africa 218
11. Hunger and Profit 239
12. The Billionaire Factory 257
13. Merchants of Power 280
Conclusion: A Lot of Skeletons 304
Acknowledgements 329
Appendices 331
Notes 335
Index 393
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introduction
THE LAST SWASHBUCKLERS
The plane banked hard as it started its descent.
Far below, the placid waters of the Mediterranean had given way
to a barren expanse of North African desert. Columns of smoke
dotted the horizon. Inside the small private jet, the occupants were
stony-faced, bracing against their seats as they descended in a series
of stomach-churning corkscrew turns.
This wasn’t a normal business trip, even for Ian Taylor. In four
decades trading oil, Taylor had set down in plenty of hot spots, from
Caracas to Tehran. Yet this journey – destination Benghazi, Libya,
in the midst of a civil war – was a new experience.
Taylor only had to look out of the window to be reminded of
the risks he was running. A thousand feet below, a lonely NATO
drone was chaperoning his plane. Taylor, chief executive of Vitol,
the world’s largest oil-trading company, found himself wishing his
contacts in the British government had sent a proper fighter jet to
escort him.
It was early 2011, and the entire region was in the throes of a wave
of popular uprisings that came to be known as the Arab Spring. In
Libya, forces revolting against the forty-two-year dictatorship of
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had just taken control of Benghazi, the
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most important city in the east of the country, and founded their
own government.
The rag-tag army of rebels had a big problem, however. It was
running out of fuel. The rebels urgently needed diesel and gasoline
for their military vehicles and heavy fuel oil to run their power sta-
tions. Libya’s own refineries had been shuttered by the war, leaving
only a trickle of fuel entering the country via hundreds of trucks
making the arduous trip from Egypt.
If anyone could take the risk of supplying a rebel army in the
middle of a bloody war, it was Ian Taylor.1 Bald, wiry and tireless,
Taylor had transformed Vitol from a mid-sized fuel distributor into
an oil trading giant. In the process, he had made it a potent force in
the global economy, handling enough oil every day to supply Ger-
many, France, Spain, the UK and Italy combined.2 Now in his
mid-fifties, he combined the easy charm of a member of the British
establishment with the taste for adventure that was a prerequisite
for an oil trader. He had never been afraid to lead Vitol to places
where others feared to tread. And, in a world where oil and money
go hand in hand with power, he was not one to shy away from deals
that carried wider geopolitical significance.
When, a few weeks earlier, the possibility of a deal with the Libyan
rebels had come up, Taylor hadn’t hesitated. Vitol’s team in the Mid-
dle East had received a call from the government of Qatar. The small
gas-rich Gulf state had become a key political and financial backer
of the Libyan rebels, acting as a go-between for them with Western
governments and supplying them with weapons and cash. But buying
tankers full of refined oil products and delivering them into a war
zone was beyond Qatar’s capability. It needed the help of a com-
modity trader. The Qataris wanted to know if Vitol could supply
diesel, gasoline and fuel oil to Benghazi.
Vitol had four hours to think about it, and respond. The trading
house only needed four minutes to say yes.
But there was a big catch. The rebels had no cash. Instead, Vitol
would have to take payment in the form of crude oil from the few
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oilfields that the rebels controlled. In theory, that shouldn’t have
posed a problem: Vitol could deliver fuel across the Mediterranean
to the port of Benghazi, while receiving crude oil via a pipeline to
the coastal city of Tobruk, near the Egyptian border and far away
from the fighting (see map on page 331).
Taylor and the rest of Vitol’s top brass quickly put together a
proposal. It was nothing new for a big trading house like Vitol to
barter one commodity for another, particularly when facing a cash-
strapped customer. Indeed, other traders were also vying to take part
in the deal with the Libyan rebels. But Vitol was more aggressive: it
was willing not only to handle the shipments of fuel, but also to
extend credit to the Libyan rebels, effectively lending them money.3
The company had another advantage: its political connections in
London and Washington. Taylor, a gifted social operator with the
charisma of a born politician, was a leading donor to the ruling
Conservative Party. His contact book in London’s business and politi-
cal elites was second to none. Only a few months later, he would
join other financiers at a dinner with the prime minister at 10 Down-
ing Street. ‘Obviously, I got permission from the Brits to go in,’
Taylor later recalled.4
In the UK, a covert ‘Oil Cell’ at the Foreign Office worked to
prevent Gaddafi’s forces from obtaining fuel or selling crude inter-
nationally. Washington granted a sanctions waiver to allow US
companies to buy Libyan oil from Vitol. And, of course, there was
the NATO drone.
But while London and Washington were supportive of Vitol’s
mission, they weren’t prepared to intervene too overtly on its behalf.
As Taylor descended into what was still a war zone, he knew that,
if something went wrong, he was on his own.
The possibility of anti-aircraft fire from Gaddafi’s forces meant
that a conventional landing was too dangerous, so the pilot descended
as fast as the jet could dive. Taylor was alone in the small plane apart
from a pair of hired bodyguards and Chris Bake, a thick-set New
Zealander who ran Vitol’s operations in the Middle East.
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