Hidden oil giant Vitol skirts war, market chaos to make billions

IT WASN'T a normal business trip, even for Ian Taylor. Over an almost 40-year career in oil, the Oxford-educated Briton had set down in plenty of hot spots, from Teheran to Caracas, Baghdad to Lagos. Yet this journey - destination Benghazi, Libya in the midst of a civil war - was different.

All Mr Taylor had to do was peer out of the window of the private plane he was in for a reminder. A thousand feet below, a Nato drone chaperoned the aircraft. Mr Taylor, the compactly built chief executive officer of Vitol Group, the world's biggest independent oil trader, found himself wishing it were a proper fighter jet.

It was early 2011. Forces revolting against the 42-year dictatorship of Muammar Gaddafi had just taken control of the city and founded their own government. This meeting with the ragtag group of former military officials and local politicians had come together quickly, but if anybody could arrange something with them, Mr Taylor figured, it was Vitol.