Riddles, mysteries and enigmas

摘要

Few people outside Russia have ever heard of Gunvor-and Gunvor would probably prefer it that way. It is the world's fourth-biggest oil trader, and at its peak handled roughly a third of Russia's seaborne exports of crude oil. We suspect that Gunvor has been driving down the price of Russian oil. An investigation by The Economist into Gunvor's trading in Urals crude, a benchmark blend in north-west Europe, suggests that such a strategy could have helped the firm buy oil in Russia cheaply and, in theory, earn inflated profits when it sold the same oil on the international market at full price.