Each year, LEAP finds a lot of energy in bringing together Board members and active participants, and this year was certainly no exception when Kathryn Upson, as LEAP Chair, hosted a face-to-face at the London BP Offices on 4th Nov. With attendance of Board members from TOTSA, Shell, Chevron and BP, it was noted that there is a now a greater sense of momentum with several in-flight initiatives, and also a growing network of participants across the Industry than was seen in 2018.

For the afternoon session, the Board was keen to take the opportunity to thank and celebrate the work currently going on and welcomed a number of the participants to join a round table session around how this is proceeding. The Board was pleased to welcome the attendance of Jens Poulson as CEO of Marcura who has recently re-joined LEAP together with members of his London team, as well as Will Osborn from Blockchain provider VAKT, and Erik Lankamp from Vopak.

In walking through the various initiatives, Peter Harvey as LEAP Programme Director introduced the LEAP operating model, and the “Opportunity Papers”, which had enabled those working on an initiative to gain a clearer focus on their objectives.

Standard Letter of Indemnity (Agreed Opportunity Paper)
This working group, with strong contribution from Julia Rayment (BP), Ghislaine Allan (TOTSA), Rob Porter (Shell), and Fernando Franda (Chevron) is now in the final stages of agreeing the wording for this LEAP standard. As this is adopted across the industry, this legal wording will facilitate a more straightforward handling of payment cashflow, in the situation where operational documentation is delayed. This will help companies avoid the administrative overhead of re-working cases of confusion and streamline transactions quicker into settlement. This work has really benefitted from the deep understanding that Julia has brought, using her considerable experience in the handling of contracts for physical oil movements.

Know Your Customer (Draft Opportunity Paper)
Penelope Wright from Shell, shared with the room, an introduction to the regulatory and compliance challenges associated with the Know Your Customer (KYC) process. In response to the drive from regulators for additional levels of compliance, companies are all finding their own way through the challenge of how to respond to this. Various approaches to how an initial request for information can become aligned is something this team wants to explore, and this LEAP project team will partner with digital technology providers such as Komgo, to see where an alignment on requirements can also deliver a level of digital automation. There was much interest in the room, with Danny from BP alongside other nominations from Chevron, TOTSA and Marcura all expressing an interest to join this working group, as it refines the opportunity paper.

Barge Receipts (Agreed Opportunity Paper)
Darren Regan from BP, reported progress on this initiative, and highlighted the journey the team had been on since Dec 2018. In particular, there was now a greater focus on the specific “Straight Through Process” objective, which had allowed the discussion to pay particular attention to the exact business use-case which would enable this, and put this into perspective alongside other opportunity areas such as lay-time/demurrage information flow, or the transport documentation. There is also a growing sense of partnership with VAKT, on how this standard can relate to the digitization across the Barge Market, and also a growing appreciation that the developing standard will need clarity on how we should define the associated master reference data. Next steps will be to circulate the current draft standard interface (V0.8), continue to leverage the considerable experience from PIDX, and bring a proposal on the handling of master data, which will be discussed with VAKT and the LEAP Board in December.

Standard Laytime / Demurrage Information (Opportunity Paper to be drafted)
There is now a growing recognition that this area is distinct to the Barge Receipt discussion, involving different stakeholders and a different and important value proposition. There was support from a number of participants in the room, including Elizabeth Nemeth from BP, Nigel Harkness at Marcura, and others to drive a greater alignment on how we can better interchange this information, and drive a greater level of efficiency in the processing of demurrage, a topic which requires considerable interaction across industry partners. This group will now convene and start to shape what the opportunity paper will be.

In concluding the session, and on behalf of the LEAP Board, Kathryn thanked everyone for their energy and participation, and invited everyone to the celebratory reception that followed.

Certainly the Board will have much to discuss, when they meet again in early December to channel this momentum into plans reaching into 2020. If you are interested in learning more about LEAP or any of these initiatives, email [email protected].