Indian Oil Corporation has emerged as the top company in oil trading amongst national oil companies in the Asia Pacific region, as per the annual survey conducted by Applied Trading Systems, Singapore for the year 2003.

In the latest survey, IOC is placed at the top of the list followed by Petronas of Malaysia, ENOC of United Arab Emirates, KPC of Kuwait and Saudi Petroleum of Saudi Arabia, an IOC press release said in New Delhi.

The survey covered 80 major petroleum trading companies in the Asia Pacific region and a ballot of 100 companies was sought to evaluate these 80 trading companies.

IOC annually imports over 32 million tonnes of crude oil and nearly 2 million tonnes of products, mainly LPG for domestic use, besides exporting over 1 million tonnes of finished products.

Over the years, IOC has initiated a series of measures to benchmark its trading systems with international best practices.

An oil trading and risk management desk is also underway at IOC to further optimise its crude oil procurement by tapping marketing opportunities and enhancing the use of risk management tools to mitigate risks due to volatile international crude oil prices.

In the same survey and for the first time this year, IOC also figured amongst the top five in "Improved Companies" category of the listing and was ranked only behind Phibro, Marubeni and China Aviation, but ahead of Itochu.