PetroChina seeks to buy Aruba refinery to facilitate deals with Pdvsa

The purchase of the refinery will pave the way for the processing of Venezuelan heavy crude oil before shipment to Asia

EL UNIVERSAL

Thursday May 10, 2012 02:39 PM

State-run oil company PetroChina is reportedly negotiating the purchase of Valero Energy's idle refinery in Aruba, sources told Reuters.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Valero said it had received a non-binding indication of interest for the 235,000 bpd Aruba refinery for USD 350 million plus working capital. The US company did not identify the interested party.

Sources familiar with the negotiations said the proposal had been made by PetroChina, which had reached a deal with state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela to supply the Aruba plant with heavy crude oil. The Aruba plant has two fairly new coker units to process heavy Venezuelan crude as well as a hydrotreating capability, which was recently upgraded.

This would allow PetroChina to semi-process heavy crude and then ship the product to Asia to finish processing in Chinese refineries.

Venezuela is currently supplying 460,000 bpd of oil to China.

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José Vicente Rangel clearly said: "We are not conducting negotiations threatened with a gun in the head." He warned behind closed doors in the midst of the social upheaval occurred during the oil strike in 2002 and 2003. Dissenting Timoteo Zambrano answered back that no other option was available: "The thing is that otherwise, you do not negotiate."

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