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Citgo liquidates four subsidiaries in Aruba

A subsidiary of Citgo, the US-based refining opposition, led by Juan Guaido, in 2019. These
arm of Venezuela’s national oil company (NOC) companies were all keen to distance themselves
PdVSA, has scaled back its presence in Aruba, from PdVSA, and as a result, the refinery project
where its parent company had previously sought has languished.
to refurbish the 235,000 barrel per day (bpd) San The government of Aruba then formally
Nicolas oil refinery. terminated PDVH’s lease in early 2020. It did
According to information published recently so after CAH confirmed that it was unable to
in Aruba’s official gazette, Citgo Aruba Holding uphold its commitment to renovate the plant,
(CAH), a subsidiary of Delaware-registered along with its storage, docking and terminal
PdV Holding (PDVH), has voluntarily liqui- facilities, and keep it supplied with crude oil.
dated four of its local subsidiaries. The liquida- Later in 2020, the government announced
tion affects Citgo Aruba Terminal, Citgo Aruba plans to examine other options for the refin-
Marine Operations and Citgo Aruba Supply, as ery, which was previously owned by Valero. It
well as Citgo Aruba Thrift Foundation, a stand- invited qualified bidders to submit proposals to
alone entity. However, it does not affect a fifth state-owned Refineria di Aruba (RdA), setting
CAH subsidiary known as Citgo Aruba Refin- up a multi-track process under which potential
ing (CAR), which will remain active for the time investors could offer to lease, modernise and
being. operate the refinery; build new facilities at the
CAH established the four liquidated compa- site of the refinery; or repurpose the refinery for
nies in 2016, around the same time that PdVSA a different project.
secured a lease for the San Nicolas refinery in As of press time, RdA had not named any
Aruba. The lease contract provided for the NOC potential partners. ™
to rehabilitate the plant so that it could use the
facility to process heavy crude oil from fields in
the Orinoco Belt into a lighter synthetic fuel.
After the contract was finalised, PdVSA assigned
the $1.1bn project to US-based Citgo, which is
owned by PDVH’s Citgo Holding subsidiary.
Citgo then established CAH as its vehicle for
work on the refinery but was slow to launch the
project. PdVSA blamed its lack of progress on
the US government’s decision to impose sanc-
tions on the Venezuelan government in 2017,
and conditions grew even worse after Wash-
ington expanded to sanctions regime to cover
PdVSA in early 2019.
Meanwhile, Citgo and its various subsidiaries
came under the control of Venezuela’s political The San Nicolas refinery is owned by Refineria di Aruba (Photo: Curaçao Chronicle)

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO
Heritage Petroleum reports profits

and revenues down in FY 2020

HERITAGE Petroleum, the national oil com- 2020.
pany (NOC) of Trinidad and Tobago, has This represents a fall of about 12.2% on the
revealed that its profits and revenues both figure of TTD5.398bn ($794.5mn) recorded in
declined in Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. the previous fiscal year.
In its latest annual report, which was released The company also reported a gross profit of
at the weekend, Heritage reported that it had TTD1.622bn ($238.7mn) for FY 2020, down
earned nearly TTD4.74bn ($697.6mn) in the by 12.8% on the previous year’s figure of than
12-month period ending on September 30, $1.842bn ($271.2mn)..

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 26 01•July•2021