Downstream sales, closures and acquisitions

Sales
Chevron has put is Pembrokeshire plant up for sale. This is part of Chevron’s global reevaluation of business and restructuring under which 2000 redundancies are expected to be made. The facility employs 1400 people, processes approximately 220 000 bpd and supplies petrol for the 1100 Texaco petrol stations located throughout the UK. There is however, a glimmer of hope surrounding the Pembrokeshire plant, as Chevron has said it will continue operations at the site if a buyer is not found.

Valero Energy is in the process of putting its Delaware City refinery up for sale where operations were halted in November 2009. PBF Investments are already in the process of making offers for the plant and will be an active party in bidding for the Paulsboro refinery, New Jersey. PBF expect the Delaware City refinery sale to be completed by the end of March. At the moment, Valero have no fixed plans for the Aruba refinery, which was shutdown at the end of last year.

Closures
Total have announced the official closure of its Dunkirk refinery after months of strike action by workers. Total has voiced plans to change the facility into a refining and operations support and logistics site and LNG terminal.

Acquisitions
Petron Corp. has signed an agreement to purchase 40% of Petrochemical Asia Ltd. Petron have purchased a stake in the company which owns the Limay, Bataan polypropylene plant as it wishes to diversify into the petrochemicals industry and add additional revenue streams to its increasing business portfolio.

Oil Refineries, Israel, has now purchased the remaining shares of Haifa Basic Oils. The company has acquired shares from Sonol Israel and Granite, Delek and Paz. Oil Refineries has complete ownership of the company and will add it to its petrochemicals sector.

Petroliam Nasional Berhad, the African subsidiary of Engen Ltd. has expressed interest in purchasing some of the marketing assets BP Plc plans on selling. The company, which is partly owned by Petronas, is looking at the Tanziania, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Botswana operations. Engen’s acquisition of these businesses could be a perfect solution to increasing refining capacity in Africa and save PetroSA from constructing a greenfield facility.

Petrobras, Brazil has confirmed that it owns the entire Pasadena Refining System Inc. refinery, Houston, Texas, USA. The facility currently processes 100 000 bpd and Petrobras are considering looking in to converting the plant to process heavy crude.

Essar, India is planning on purchasing Shell’s Stanlow refinery, Cheshire, UK and is currently the preferred bidder. In order to help raise the necessary funds (US$ 3 billion), the company will be listed on the London stock exchange. Essar has also made an offer of £ 1.2 billion for Shell’s Heide and Harburg facilities in Germany.

Read the article online at: https://www.hydrocarbonengineering.com/gas-processing/13032010/downstream_sales_closures_and_acquisitions/