MOSCOW (MRC) -- Curacao’s state-run refining company Refineria di Korsou (RdK) said it reached a closing agreement with CORC B.V. to operate the 335,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) Isla refinery and neighbouring facilities, said Reuters.
The deal comes after RdK in January selected CORC as its preferred partner to operate Isla, the Bullenbay oil terminal and a linked utility company. Isla and Bullenbay had been run by Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela through the end of 2019, when its lease expired.
CORC, which is short for Curacao Oil Refinery Complex, will now negotiate fiscal terms and other aspects of the deal with the Dutch Caribbean island’s government and other state-owned entities before the definitive handover of the facilities, RdK said.
While the negotiations have been underway, Geneva-based firm Mercuria Energy Trading had received oil for storage at Bullenbay under a short-term deal. That came after a prior deal with oil firm SPS Drilling E&P to rent about 6 million barrels of Bullenbay’s 15-million barrel capacity fell apart due to a disagreement about fees.
An entry in the Curacao Commercial register shows CORC B.V. was established on Sept. 29, 2020 and that its directors are Spanish-born Dutch citizen Francisco Javier Modesto Santos Hernandez Rodriguez and Curacao-born Manoel Hussein De Silva De Freitas.
As MRC informed earlier, Curacao is pursuing a USD162 million arbitration claim against Venezuela’s state-run PDVSA oil firm over its management of the island’s oil refinery. The Dutch Caribbean islandseized a PDVSA-owned oil storage terminal in neighboring Bonaire to enforce claims for overdue payments, maintenance costs and environmental damage at RdK, Marcelino de Lannoy. Curacao separately expects a contract with commodities firm Klesch Group to operate the 335,000-barrel-per-day Isla refinery and its storage facilities will be delayed. Klesch is committed to the deal.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 576,270 tonnes in the first three month of 2021, up by 4% year on year. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) shipments increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market totalled 410,890 tonnes in January-March 2021, up by 56% year on year. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
MRC