WILLEMSTAD - During his weekly press conference, the Prime Minister of Curaçao Eugene Rhuggenaath announced that the local environmental standards will be raised to the international/European level in the coming two years. This means that the new operator of the refinery Klesch Group will have to adhere to this new standard.

For now, Klesch Group will work with a nuisance permit that is the same as that applied to Refineria Isla / PdVSA.

This change comes as no surprise to Klesch and is part of the Government Agreement, in which the standards will be included in anticipation of new laws and regulations.

The environmental investments that are required for this are then entirely at the expense of Klesch as a new operator, in contrast to the previous lease contract with PdVSA, where government-owned company Refineria di Kòrsou (RdK) had to pay 50 percent of the required investments.