Vitol and UAE-Based Heritage Petroleum Supplied 22 Million Barrels of Crude to Israel, Report Finds

Between October 2023 and June 2026, two oil trading companies most Israelis and most Americans have never heard of moved roughly 22 million barrels of crude into Israel, according to a joint report from Oil Change International and the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO).

That volume, drawn from shipping-tracking data on the Kpler platform, accounts for about 11 percent of Israel's total crude imports over the period, the report found. The two companies named are Vitol, a trading house headquartered in Geneva, and Heritage Petroleum FZCO, registered in the United Arab Emirates.

Together, the companies exported approximately 22 million barrels to Israel, representing 11 percent of the country's total crude imports between October 2023 and June 2026.

The report's authors describe both firms as operating with little public visibility compared to the oil majors, BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell, that have faced sustained activist pressure and shareholder scrutiny over their role in supplying Israel's energy needs during the Gaza war. Vitol, in particular, is one of the largest independent oil and gas traders in the world by volume, but it is privately held, discloses far less than publicly listed competitors, and rarely appears in consumer-facing coverage of the conflict.

Routed through an embargo

The more striking finding concerns Turkey. Ankara formally suspended trade with Israel in 2024 over the war in Gaza, a step Turkish officials presented as a substantive measure. Researchers say the shipping data tells a different story: the majority of the crude moved by Vitol and Heritage to Israel passed through the Turkish port of Ceyhan, a major hub on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline route for oil originating largely in the Caspian region.

OCI and SOMO also identified two subsidiaries linked to Heritage Petroleum on Turkey's own trade register, a detail that suggests the routing was not an accident of geography but a structural feature of how the company organized its supply chain into Israel while a stated embargo was in effect.

Why the traders, not just the majors

Campaigns targeting BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell over their supply relationships with Israel have generated shareholder resolutions, protests and extensive press coverage since October 2023. The trading intermediaries that physically move crude from producer to buyer, and that can obscure origin and routing behind chartering arrangements, have drawn comparatively little attention, according to the report's authors.

That asymmetry is the core argument of the OCI-SOMO research: sanctions and embargo announcements mean little if the traders executing the actual cargo movements are not named, tracked and held to the same standard as the companies whose logos appear at the pump. Neither Vitol nor Heritage Petroleum FZCO is quoted in the report responding to the findings, and Middle East Eye's account does not indicate either company was reached for comment.