Saudi arabia'southward state oil company, Saudi Aramco, has bought into the blockchain-based oil trading company Vakt, Reuters reports on Jan. 28.

Saudi Aramco's Energy Ventures branch has bought $5 million in new shares, according to Vakt's press release. The investment will be used to develop the platform, with a focus on expansion into the Asian market.

In addition to investment, the oil conglomerate's trading subsidiary Aramco Trading is set to use the Vakt platform. The platform is currently live in the Due north Sea Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk and Troll crude oil markets, where it reports to accept a loftier market share. Aramco Trading will add together its trading volumes to the blockchain-based platform.

Potential to streamline and modernize oil trading

The Vakt platform focuses on mail-trade processing for physical energy transactions. It provides a smooth process from merchandise entry to settlement by eliminating newspaper-based processes and manual bookkeeping practices. Hans Middelthon, managing director of SAEV Europe said, "VAKT has demonstrated that their platform has the potential to digitize what is currently a very manual process."

The use of blockchain ensures a "single source of truth" for both buyers and sellers, which is stored on an immutable and distributed ledger, according to Vakt.

Vakt launched its trading platform in December 2018 with an initial limitation on N Sea markets. The visitor was created in 2017 by a consortium of industry leaders that included Shell and BP, which were too the outset users of the platform.

Since then, the platform onboarded more industry giants such as Chevron, Total and India'south Reliance Industries.

Saudi Aramco — the largest oil company in the earth in terms of production — has previously invested in blockchain firms via its venture subsidiary. In May 2019, the business firm participated in a $6 one thousand thousand funding round for American blockchain startup Data Gumbo Corp.