Physical oil & gas · Verified counterparties · 79 jurisdictions
Real refinery trade has procedures.
We built the platform that runs on them.
Sanctions screened against four lists. Seven-step KYC with named regulators per country. Auto-drafted NCNDA, FCO, and SPA, counsel reviewed before signing. Rotterdam, Houston, Singapore, Yokohama, Karachi, Fujairah, Mombasa — and every corridor in between.
23 of 25 founding broker seats open·2 claimed, permanent
New Match
Pakistan refined → UAE · 180K bbl
Trust 94 · LC 30d · Jan 24 laycan
Signals
What we run on, what we block
Real refinery trade has procedures. The scam ecosystem has performances.
If you've spent any time in this market you've seen the second column. We don't translate it, we don't soften it, and we don't introduce parties who quote it.
Grades · real
EN590, ULSD, Jet A-1, Gasoil 0.1
ISO 8217 marine, ASTM D975
Grades · blocked
Virgin D2, M100, JP54
Made-up grades. Not in any spec sheet.
Pricing · real
Platts FOB Singapore + named basis
Argus Med, Argus FEW, ICE Brent
Pricing · blocked
TBD or 'best price'
No basis means no enforceable contract.
Payment · real
Operative LC at sight, 30/60/90
MT700, advised + confirmed
Payment · blocked
Non-operative DLC MT700, 2% PB
An LC that won't honor is decoration.
Destination · real
Named port with draft confirmed
Rotterdam, Houston, Singapore, Yokohama, Karachi, Fujairah, Mombasa
Destination · blocked
ASWP (Any Safe World Port)
Real freight quotes need a real port.
Inspection · real
SGS or Saybolt at load + discharge
Quantity + quality, both ends
Inspection · blocked
Tank Storage Receipt only
TSRs cover storage, not lifting.
Sequence · real
NCNDA, FCO, accepted, SPA, LC
Counsel-reviewed before signing
Sequence · blocked
ICPO + 2% PB before any FCO
Real sellers issue offers, not demands.
Pattern detection runs on every listing and every introduction. Confirmed scam tokens (Virgin D2, M100, JP54, ASWP, Hub Number, ICPO + 2% PB) auto-reject at intake. Marginal cases route to manual review. Source rules: shared/compliance.py.
A platform you can trust at 6am is one that names every list, regulator, and rule it runs on.
I’d rather be direct with you than waste your time. The broker stack takes 2 to 6 percent off every cargo and adds nothing. I built the replacement.
Rafae·Founder, OilFlow Network
Verification, opened up
What ‘verified’ actually means here. Step by step, list by list.
Most platforms hand-wave this. We publish the steps because the standard is the differentiation. If a step ever lapses on a member, our matching agent refuses to introduce them.
Sanctions screening
Hard stopCompany, all directors, and ultimate beneficial owners run against four lists. Any single match auto-rejects. No override exists in the code.
OFAC SDN · UN Consolidated · EU Consolidated · UK HM Treasury
Company registration
Country-specific registry lookup with OpenCorporates as global fallback. Confirms the legal entity exists and is in good standing.
Companies House (UK) · KVK (NL) · Handelsregister (DE) · ASIC (AU) · SEC EDGAR (US) · ACRA (SG) · Brønnøysundregistrene (NO) · SECP (PK) · DMCC / DED (UAE) · 70+ others
Regulatory license
Petroleum-specific license per the country's regulator. Without this, the matching engine refuses to introduce the member at all.
EPDK (TR) · METI (JP) · MOTIE (KR) · NDRC + MOFCOM (CN) · NOPTA (AU) · CER (CA) · CRE (MX) · OGRA (PK) · EPRA (KE) · NUPRC (NG) · ANP (BR) · 67+ others
Asset confirmation
Physical asset evidence via news archives, port records, satellite imagery, or trade press. Not a virtual office, not a PO box.
Marine Traffic · port authority records · trade press archives
Trade references
Two prior counterparties contacted. We verify the trade actually happened, the volume matches, and they would deal with this party again.
Direct outreach with reply tracking, 5 business day SLA
Digital footprint
Web presence, LinkedIn company page, trade press mentions, conference attendance. A serious physical-trade firm leaves a paper trail.
Domain age · LinkedIn employee count · trade press citations
Scam pattern screening
Deterministic rules first (Virgin D2, ICPO + 2% PB, ASWP, MT700 non-operative). Then Claude Opus extended-thinking for the holistic risk read.
shared/compliance.py rules + AI risk assessment
Re-verification runs every 90 days. If a sanctions list, regulator, or trade reference changes status, the member is paused and the operator is alerted before the next introduction goes out.
Corridor intelligence
Phase 1 corridors, in their actual rules.
Every country has a regulator, a payment-term constraint, and at least one product that's off-limits to private trade. The matching engine reads from the same rules. If a match would violate them, it scores zero with the reason attached.
Pakistan
- State Bank of Pakistan forex controls
- TT advance not permitted on import
SBP requires Letter of Credit for every petroleum import. We enforce it on the listing form so deals that violate the rule never reach a counterparty.
Kenya
- Crude is Open Tender System only, no private import
- PVoC certificate required for refined
Kenya runs an Open Tender System for crude. Private companies cannot independently import. The matching engine returns zero results for private-buyer crude requests in Kenya.
Bangladesh
- BPC is the sole authorized crude importer
- Bangladesh Bank requires confirmed irrevocable LC
Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation is the only entity that can import crude. Period. We don't pretend that policy doesn't exist. Refined-product trade is open with IRC + confirmed LC.
United Arab Emirates
- 5% VAT applies to platform fees on UAE-billed members
- UBO disclosure required at member onboarding
Open market. Most flexible payment terms in the network. Fujairah and Jebel Ali are the busiest discharge ports for our active corridors.
Tanzania
- TPDC handles crude, private importers focus on refined
- Inland transhipment to Burundi, Rwanda, eastern DRC
Refined product flows through Dar es Salaam to landlocked neighbors. Crude is government-controlled. Our active demand is mostly refined, MR-tanker scale.
Saudi Arabia
- 15% VAT applies to platform fees on Saudi-billed members
- Aramco controls all crude production allocation
Refining and downstream products are tradable by private parties. Crude allocation runs through Aramco. Most of our Saudi-side activity is refined export to East Africa.
Source rules: shared/regulatory.py (79 non-sanctioned countries codified) and shared/compliance.py (payment-term and FX restrictions per regime). Deepest counterparty density today across Pakistan, Gulf, East Africa, and SE Asia — every other corridor is live and matched on the same engine.
Every match the engine returns has already passed the country’s rules. If it can’t, you don’t see it.
The fleet, live
Six agents on a clock. No committee, no delays.
The platform is a system, not a website. While you sleep in your timezone, the fleet is running in every other one. A match reaches score 80 at 03:00 anywhere on earth, the introduction goes out the same minute — no committee, no delays.
Deal Guardian
LiveStatus: liveValidates every match before introduction. Volume plausibility, specs compatibility, payment-term legality both sides, sanctions, regulatory product-country rule. Any check fails, the introduction never goes out.
Circumvention Monitor
LiveStatus: liveWatches for off-platform settlement. Stale contracted matches over 30 days, both parties silent over 21 days post-intro, supply listings withdrawn after a match. Confirmed flags trigger commission recovery under the IMFPA.
NCNDA Dispatcher
LiveStatus: liveThe moment both parties verify, generates an NCNDA from their company data and sends for DocuSign signature. Reminders day 3, 5, 7. On both signatures, releases held matches and locks broker commission.
Blocklist Monitor
LiveStatus: liveRe-scores every flagged broker and company against fresh evidence from FuelScamAlert, BadBuyerList, OpenSanctions, and open web. Severity only goes up automatically. Downgrades require human review.
Market Intel
LiveStatus: livePulls EIA, OPEC, Reuters, TradingEconomics, Baltic Exchange tanker indices, MarineTraffic, Platts and Argus headlines. Detects arbitrage windows, risk flags, and supply disruptions. Powers the price feed and morning brief.
Deal Matching
LiveStatus: liveRegulatory pre-check, then scoring on grade, volume, corridor, payment, timeline, price, verification. Score 80 or higher auto-introduces. 60 to 79 routes to operator review. Below 60 holds for the next cycle.
The full fleet is 36 agents across data, distribution, trust, and infrastructure. Health coverage on 34 of them via the orchestrator. Source: shared/health.py.
Market intel, in public
What the engine sees today. Members get the full read.
The Market Intel agent runs at 05:00 and 12:00 UTC daily. Below is a public sliver of today's snapshot: benchmarks, brief excerpt, and any open arbitrage windows.
Today’s brief, excerpted
CRUDE BENCHMARKS: Brent settled at $100.49/bbl (+$0.43), WTI at $94.68/bbl (-$0.13), and Dubai at $98.49/bbl. The Brent-WTI arb widened to $5.81/bbl, supportive of transatlantic flows from USGC to NW Europe and Med refiners. Brent-Dubai EFS at $2.00/bbl keeps Atlantic Basin barre…
Free Daily Intel
Pakistan-Gulf-East Africa market brief
Benchmarks, arbitrage windows, risk flags, and trade corridor analysis. Delivered to your inbox every morning. No commitment.
Open arbitrage windows · today
Three sides, one network
Pick the side you trade on.
Each side gets the tools built for the way it actually works. The middle of the network is the same matching, verification, and document automation.
For sellers
Distressed-supply detection routes your cargo to verified buyers in days, not weeks. The agent reads port records, demurrage signals, and quarter-end pressure.
- Stale-listing pricing advisories at 30 days
- Buyer matches with regulatory pre-clearance
- FCO and SPA drafts on accepted offers
For buyers
Discover verified counterparties across 79 non-sanctioned countries with sanctions-safe, product-legal matching. Landed-cost and netback math is built into the cockpit.
- Landed-cost and netback calculators inline
- LC coordination via partner banks
- Inspection plus vessel tracking on every deal
For brokers
Bring your book. Earn 20 to 25 percent of subscriptions and 15 to 25 percent of deal fees. Circumvention monitoring protects every introduction you make.
- Multi-broker chains via deal_attributions
- Founding Partner tier, permanent, no cap
- Auto-NCNDA and IMFPA before any introduction
$0 because we started broke. The first 25 brokers join free for life.
Brokers, the math
$0 because we started broke.
The first 25 brokers join free for life. No subscription, no setup fee, no platform tax on your book. We earn 0.25% only when a deal closes. The math below is illustrative, but the structure is real.
“You shouldn’t pay a platform tax to do your job. The first 25 brokers ride free for life because we’re still small enough to remember what that felt like.”
Rafae · Founder · OilFlow Network
Bring 10 verified clients. They each close 3 deals a year, average cargo value $2M. Platform fee is 0.25%, of which 25% routes back to you under the founding broker revshare.
You collect on every deal your clients close, paid within 72 hours of the seller receiving cargo payment. The IMFPA is auto-dispatched and signed before the introduction; circumvention triggers liquidated damages.
No subscription. We invoice via Stripe after the seller is paid.
From cargo payment received to revshare landed in your account.
Both auto-dispatched at intro. Signed within 7 days or the match holds.
Two-broker chains supported via deal_attributions, total split caps at 100%.
Your broker book, after a verified intro
Pipeline
$6,950
3 deals
YTD revshare
$11.25k
9 closes
Next payout
72h
from cargo paid
Refinery · Rotterdam
In flightStatus: pendingTrading house · Singapore
ActiveStatus: liveRefinery · Karachi
In flightStatus: pendingNumbers shown are illustrative. After a real intro, this page populates from your actual deal_attributions and partner_earnings rows.
Membership
Pay when you trade. Or pay to protect a book.
Buyers and sellers join free and pay only on closed deals. Brokers pay monthly for commission protection on every introduction.
Trader
$0
Buyers and sellers
- Full marketplace access
- 7-step KYC plus sanctions screening
- NCNDA, deal room, DocuSign included
- 0.25% deal fee on closed matches ($2,500 minimum)
Broker Pro
23/25 founding
$0/mo
Pure transactional, 0.25% on close. First 25 brokers get permanent network access.
- Everything in Trader, plus:
- Commission protection (circumvention monitor + signed NCNDA)
- White-labeled deal rooms for your counterparties
- Multi-broker split tooling and first-contact ledger
- Priority KYC for your buyer and seller intros
- 25% revshare on deal fees you originate
No subscription, no setup fee. We invoice the 0.25% via Stripe after the deal closes.
Apply when you’re ready. We pay attention.
Founder
Why I built OilFlow
I'm not an oil trader. The people I built this for are everywhere physical oil trades: refinery operators in Lahore, Mumbai, and Bilbao; thirty-year veterans of the Houston and Geneva trading floors; brokers working Rotterdam, Singapore, Karachi, and Lagos. I spent months listening to them describe the same thing. Deals that fell apart, not because the price was wrong. Because the counterparty turned out to be a broker of a broker. Because the documents never matched. Because no one could confirm who was actually shipping what. The story was identical in every timezone.
OilFlow is what I built after hearing that story enough times. A private, verified network across 79 non-sanctioned regulatory jurisdictions worldwide. Every member passes the same 7-step background check before they see a single listing: sanctions screening against OFAC, UN, EU, and UK; company registration; regulator licensing; trade references. Every deal has a structured workflow. Paperwork is auto-drafted from accepted terms and counsel-reviewed before anyone signs.
Counterparty density is deepest today across Pakistan, the Gulf, East Africa, and SE Asia — that's where I started, that's where the warmest relationships live, and that's where matching closes fastest right now. We're live in every corridor we're cleared in, and growing toward parity everywhere else.
We don't hold funds. We don't issue letters of credit. We don't arbitrate disputes. We do the unglamorous parts — verification, matching, document orchestration, sanctions screening — so operators can focus on the trade itself.
The network is early and the founding member group is intentionally small. If what I described sounds like something you've lived through, apply. If it doesn't, reply and tell me where I'm wrong. I read every message.
Rafae Musharraf
Founder · Karachi, Pakistan
Free for the community
Resources physical oil traders can use today.
You do not need to be a member to use any of these. They exist to make physical oil trade a little less broken — in every corridor, whether you join OilFlow or not.
FAQ
What operators ask us first
The questions sophisticated traders ask before signing up. If yours isn't here, reply to any outreach email — we answer personally.
No. We are not a bank, broker-dealer, or money services business. All payments are bilateral between buyer and seller under the signed SPA. We invoice our platform fee separately via Stripe after a deal closes.
The arbitration clause in the signed SPA governs. OilFlow provides a structured dispute workspace with evidence collection and mediator proposals, but we do not issue binding decisions — that authority stays with the forum named in your contract.
Nothing on our side unless you complete the deal. Platform fees are only invoiced on deals that close. We do track failure reasons in aggregate to improve the matching engine.
Brokers who introduce verified members earn a share of subscriptions and platform fees on deals their network closes. Splits are tracked via deal_attributions (multi-broker supported). Circumvention monitoring protects your commission by flagging suspicious off-platform settlement behaviour.
Issuing a Letter of Credit requires a banking licence and a bank balance sheet. We orchestrate LCs by generating a bank-ready packet for you and — as our partner-bank MOUs close — routing them directly to trade-desk contacts who issue, advise, or confirm the instrument on their own paper.
Pure transactional. Both traders and brokers join free and stay free — you only pay the 0.25% deal fee ($2,500 minimum) on closed matches. Brokers earn 25% revshare on every deal they originate. The first 25 brokers also get permanent network access. Enterprise (trading houses, refineries) is custom — 0.20% deal fee, no minimum, API access, dedicated coordinator. Subscription tiers will return when network density supports them; until then, friction is zero.
Stored in Supabase (SOC 2 Type II). Our AI provider operates under a zero-retention DPA — your data is never used to train models. We run GDPR and CCPA programs and notify of any security incident within 72 hours.
Drafts are marked DRAFT — FOR REVIEW BY INDEPENDENT LEGAL COUNSEL. Nothing our AI produces is legal advice. You and your counterparty review, modify, and sign through DocuSign; what you sign is what binds you.
We don't run subscription tiers right now — the platform is purely transactional. Deal fees are invoiced only after completion, so there's nothing to refund if a deal doesn't close.
Platform target is 99.5% monthly uptime for authenticated surfaces. We monitor continuously with automated self-healing and operator alerting. Status page at oilflow.us/status.