Pioneers Oil: David Hufton

Today it's almost impossible to imagine an energy world without a mature, liquid oil market at its heart. Yet the development of the world's biggest commodity market was not a natural inevitability - it took the hard work and tenacity of a small and determined group of people to get it off the ground and to work out solutions to the many challenges it has faced over the years.

There are few people left in the oil markets today who operated in those early markets, but one such constant presence is David Hufton. Since 1980, Hufton has been managing director of PVM Oil Associates, now the world's leading independent over-the-counter and futures oil brokerage.

Hufton began his oil career at BP, and gained extensive knowledge of international oil trading working in London, Paris and New York. In 1980 he was recruited by Pat Mazzarulli, PVM's founder nine years earlier, to