ELEMENT Americas
ELEMENT Americas was founded in 2016 out of our strong conviction of the growth potential of the North American oil industry
ELEMENT is a 100% subsidiary of ELEMENT Group SA, a privately owned company headquartered in Geneva. In 2017, Nino Mendiburu, co-founder of ELEMENT Group SA, moved to Houston, TX in order to build a strong local team to offer ELEMENT’s services to the North American energy markets. Today, ELEMENT Americas is physically moving crude oil and refined oil products via truck, rail, pipeline and barge in Canada and the US. We also export oil via either a terminal asset of Origin International Inc., our affiliated company, on the US Atlantic Coast or via rented midstream assets in the US Gulf Coast to sea-going vessels chartered by ELEMENT Alpha SA or ELEMENT Asia PTE Ltd.
ELEMENT is an energy trading company owned and managed by experienced traders. We value our employees and partners as our most precious assets.
Nino has nearly 20 years of experience in trading physical oil and derivatives and he co-founded ELEMENT Group SA in 2015 together with Gregor von la Valette. Nino is the acting CEO of ELEMENT Americas Inc. and chairman of the board of Origin International Inc. Prior to founding ELEMENT, Nino was head of trading at Maddox SA Geneva and before that he was a middle distillate trader at SET Select Energy Hamburg. Earlier Nino worked in investment banking and traded credit derivatives for Citi in London. He began his trading career in the late 90's at Mendex. Nino holds two Master’s degrees from ESCP Europe in Paris and from City University of London.
Steve has nearly 25 years of experience in trading physical crude oil and derivatives in North America and abroad. He currently heads ELEMENT Americas’ crude oil trading and marketing desk. Prior to ELEMENT, Steve successfully built and managed the crude oil trading desk of AOT in Houston, TX, where he traded all of the Canadian and US domestic grades and also exported cargoes from the US Gulf Coast. Before that, Steve was one of the first crude traders of Mercuria in the US and traded the domestic book. Prior to that, he managed Valero’s crude oil imports and traded Middle Eastern, West African and LATAM grades. Earlier he traded crude oil for US Oil and Refining on the West Coast. Steve started his career at Koch Supply & Trading, LP.
ELEMENT Americas Inc.’s constantly growing team in Houston consists of various seasoned trading professionals, who actively trade physical crude oil, fuel oil, middle distillates, light-ends and petrochemicals as well as the respective derivatives. The traders are supported by a group of experienced finance, risk, logistics and operations experts.
Our strong team offers our suppliers and clients the same logistics, financing and risk management services as larger trading firms, while maintaining a lean cost structure with low overhead which enables ELEMENT to have a competitive edge.
FAIRNESS was the main principle defining our strategy, when we founded ELEMENT. At ELEMENT, we are fair to our counter-parties, to our financing banks, to our employees and to our shareholders!
We believe in the long-term nature of our business and we value long-term relationships more than short-term profits, which we constantly prove to our counter-parties, especially when solving problems in a friendly and constructive manner. This behavior resulted in ELEMENT's impeccable reputation in the international market place. We take pride in our good reputation and intend to build upon it in the North-American market.
We also believe that while it is crucial to fulfill our generation’s energy needs, we also have a responsibility to the future generations on our planet. Thus, we founded Origin International Inc., a sustainable recycling business for waste oils, that creates jobs in its local communities and helps protect our environment.
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