DUBAI - Hussain Sultan.

One of the close aides to Shaikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, Hussain Sultan is the CEO of Dubai-based Emirates National Oil Co. (ENOC) which has become a major business group. Fully-owned by the Dubai government, ENOC has both upstream and downstream divisions. Among ENOC's upstream assets is its 69.4% stake in the Irish-founded company Dragon Oil which operates the Lam and Zhdanov offshore oilfields in Turkmenistan. ENOC says the fields contain proven reserves of 600m barrels of oil and 3.5 TCF of natural gas. ENOC's other assets include a 120,000 b/d condensate refinery at Jebel Ali, where a plant producing gas liquids and called Dugas LPG, and a 500,000 t/y MTBE plant (see DT 25).

Part of the ENOC group are Dubai Shipping, which operates a fleet of oil and chemicals tankers, and ENOC Supply & Trading. In an interview with Petroleum Argus published on May 27, 2002, Sultan said: "Every year we (ENOC) review the performance of each of our companies and take action to improve it. Over the past three years we have set up a sizeable trading operation. Last year, we carried out a review to determine what was required to turn it into a profitable operation. We decided we had to recruit qualified and experienced staff in trading, finance and risk mana-gement. Everything was put in place at the beginning of this year... We are strictly a commercial company". He said that, in trading, ENOC started with South-East Asia "as a strong market for us. We are now moving into the (Indian) subcontinent, and the Middle East. I have no doubt that we will eventually be moving into Europe, the Caspian and Russia... We aspire to be a major global trader".

ENOC owns extensive storage in Dubai and, jointly with Van Ommeren, at the Fujairah bunker terminal (see OMT 25). Sultan told Argus: "We have strong plans to increase trading volumes through our tanks. We are developing the subcontinent, South-East Asia, East Africa and Red Sea areas. We have supplied the Indian Ocean islands and East Africa..."