Oil Buyers Ditch Paper for Blockchain to Track Tanker Sales
- Revamping $2.7 billion of trades supplying half of world crude
- Online ledger may mean cutting hundreds of backoffice workers
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Every day, dozens of oil tankers -- some as long as five football fields -- set sail for ports around the world carrying millions of barrels of crude and a piece of paper that generations of sea captains have held as dear as their cargo.
The bill of lading is the document that verifies ownership of a commodity that can be worth more than $122 million per ship. Without it, buyers and sellers who trade $2.7 billion of crude daily are unable to do business in an ocean-going tanker market that supplies almost half of the oil consumed globally.