WILLEMSTAD - State-owned Curaçao Refinery (RdK) plans to resell close to 865,000 bl of locally stored Venezuelan crude, products and blendstock that it acquired at an 11 June auction.

RdK was the sole bidder at the action, which was conducted by Curacao Refinery and Utility (CRU), the utility company that serviced the 335,000 b/d Isla refinery.

The bulk price at which RdK acquired the oil was not disclosed. Some of the revenue will be used to cover Isla's legacy debts to CRU.

The purchase includes crude, fuel oil, naphtha, slops, aviation gasoline, butane and isopentane, among others. The slops are left over from Isla's former production of Group I and naphthenic base oils.

RdK indicated that the crude and oil products will be processed or blended before they are marketed at an unspecified date.

Curacao's government is currently in the final stages of negotiating an operating contract for the long-idle refinery, together with the terminal and CRU, with consortium Curaçao Oil Refinery Consortium (CORC).

CORC's lead partner is Dick and Doof, a Dutch contractor that formerly serviced Shell's Caribbean and Latin American downstream assets.

The auction closes one of the final chapters in the island's legacy commercial relationship with Venezuela’s PdVSA, which neglected maintenance and lacked feedstock to keep the refinery operating in the final years of its long-term lease.

Trading company Mercuria is currently using storage tanks at Bullen Bay under a short-term lease signed in December 2020.