Big plans for small oil firm (From Western Telegraph)

Big plans for small oil firm

Pembrokeshire County Council is helping a small, Milford Haven-based company to strike it big in the highly competitive world of oil.

Big Oil Associates Ltd, which provides market intelligence to the downstream petrol industry via the internet, has been given a £21,000 starter grant by the council's business development team.

The only service of its kind in Europe, BigOil.net helps independent petrol retailers, commercial distributors and end users such as haulage companies and coach operators, choose the right time to buy oil from their suppliers.

Since the company went online at the beginning of last year, it has attracted hundreds of subscribers across Britain and is preparing to launch a European venture in June.

BigOil.net, which is located at Cedar Court, Havens Head Business Park, was launched in January 2004 and was also supported by the National Assembly, the Welsh Development Agency, Pembrokeshire Lottery, HSBC and Evens and Co Ltd.

The core of its service is to provide fuel price data supplied by its strategic business partner Platts - the long-established oil market monitor - in a way which can be used by independent retailers and other subscribers.

Big Oil translates Platts' assessments, which are published in dollars per tonne, into pence per litre, and also analyses the market to work out the optimum time to buy.

In the volatile oil market, buying at the right time can make significant savings.

The company has already won the Technology Wales 2004 Best New Startup Business using technology award and is now getting over 300,000 hits a month from all over the world.

Founder, Darren Briggs, aged 34, said: "The Big Oil.net platform is an industry first for this sector of the downstream petroleum industry, offering total price transparency for the market place. We also have some very exciting plans for the future.

"Our website is already being used internationally with little global marketing at all."