Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Shell Trading Career Stories: Andrew Smith, Executive Vice President Trading and Supply

Trading and Supply is the part of Shell

that makes sure that Shell gets best value for its upstream production

and makes sure that our marketing businesses have a cost-competitive supply.

We trade around the flows that that gives us, adding value to Shell.

We also take care of all the transportation activities for Shell,

so whether that's ships, trucks or terminal, we manage that globally.

We trade a variety of products, we trade crude oils around the world.

We trade finished products like gasoline, diesel and fuel oil,

and the components that we use to make those.

We also trade gas, electricity

and environmental products like CO2 permits.

Trading and Supply is probably one of the most commercial parts of Shell

so it suits people who have a real commercial bend,

a real desire to make money for the company,

but what's important is that's done in the right way.

We're a regulated firm and so compliance with the laws is really important,

market conduct is really important.

So a strong sense of business ethics is important to us.

Our frontline traders come from a great variety of backgrounds.

Some are engineers, some are geologists, some are sales staff.

They come in with all sorts of backgrounds.

What they have in common is that commercial drive.

They also have to be comfortable with taking risk.

There are very few risk-free trades.

Some days you make money, some days you lose money.

You have to be comfortable with risk.

The best traders are team players.

Collaboration is incredibly important.

We're a very physical trading operation here.

We manage a lot of physical oil.

That makes it quite complicated, so you need to be able to work as a team.

My advice to people thinking about joining Trading and Supply

is to talk to some of the people here, find out what they really do

and back yourself and give it a go.

I love this business.

Shell is one of the world's largest commodity trading firms.

We have built a tremendous business, adding enormous value.

It's a really exciting place to work,

full of a great variety of people, every day is fun.