RPT-Vitol hires trade staff in India after 5 yrs-sources

* Vitol aims to further strengthen presence in India

* Hires industry veteran Rohit Lahoti to boost Indian desk

* India growing as major force in fuel flows, crude importer

By Nidhi Verma

NEW DELHI, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Vitol is expanding its Indian oil trading business with the hiring of a former BP executive to coordinate its marketing in the country, which is growing into a major player in global fuel flows, trade sources said on Tuesday.

Rohit Lahoti is joining the European energy trading giant this month, after serving nearly 2-½ years at BP as a business development manager and about 13 years at Reliance Industries (RELI.BO) as a trader.

The world's largest independent oil trader has been operating its Indian trading and marketing activities from Singapore for the past five years. Its Indian office has so far been restricted to operational matters such as documentation, pre-shipment quality analysis and vessel movements.

"Vitol has been a key participant in Indian tenders and long-term deals. The company is looking at strengthening its operations further in India," said a trade source.

Vitol's move come as the industry is seeing an increase in hirings and job switching, emerging from the recession when many companies froze their expansion plans. [ID:nSP377504] [ID:nSIN11189] [ID:nSIN477561]

Vitol [VITOLV.UL] declined to comment. "Vitol never comments on personnel changes," a spokesperson said.

Many trading firms including Glencore [GLEN.UL], Mercuria, Trafigura, Nexen (NXY.TO), Mitsui and Itochu have set up shops in India to coordinate their trading, as they vie for the increasing volumes of oil products flowing from India to world markets and for the supply of crude taken by Indian refineries.

The latest to set up a marketing office in India was Singapore-based trader firm, Concord.

But BP Plc (BP.L) is temporarily managing its Indian supply and trading business from Dubai after four of its five-member team resigned in recent months, including Lahoti and Rohit Vedhara, Regional Manager for South Asia at its supply and trading unit. [ID:nSP19212]

RISING INDIAN SUPPLIES

India's refining capacity has been increasing especially with the start-up of Reliance's 580,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) plant, taking the total at the world's biggest refining complex to 1.24 million bpd. It plans to further expand the new facility to 720,000 bpd in the next six to eight months.

The private refiner has been exporting more across the globe and doing trades with firms such as Vitol and Glencore.

The country's overall annual refining capacity is expected to rise to 4.66 million bpd in 2012, up from 3.56 million bpd, and against the projected annual demand of 148 million tonnes (about 3.1 million bpd), a top oil ministry official said last week.

Geneva-based Vitol ships more than 200 million tonnes of oil a year and posted revenues of around $190 billion in 2008, its website show.

Its expanded presence in India will facilitate supplies from the country to feed its growing business in the Middle East, where it opened a 560,000 cubic-metre clean storage in Fujairah in September, part of its $150 million incremental investment in expanding its assets in the United Arab Emirates port.

In the second phase, it will build 140,000 cu m of storage tanks for dirty petroleum products due to start in second-quarter 2010, taking the combined new capacity to around 1.1 million cu m. In 2007, Vitol acquired a 82,000-bpd refinery in Fujairah.

Private Indian refiners are also expanding overseas. Reliance has set up trading desks in Singapore, London and Houston as it seeks to strengthen its reach and tap the developed markets.

Essar Oil (ESRO.BO) plans to set up trading desk in Singapore to help export fuel from its refinery, where capacity will be raised to 680,000 bpd by end-2011. (Additional reporting by Luke Pachymuthu in DUBAI and Yaw Yan Chong in SINGAPORE; Editing by Ramthan Hussain)