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RdK’s talks with CPR for the Isla refinery also cover the Bullenbaai terminal (Photo: Standard International Group)

RdK had named CPR – led by Luis Giusti, the investor is set to pump $5.5bn into the refinery
former head of Venezuela’s national oil company deal, the company added. The bank in question
(NOC) PdVSA – as its preferred bidder for the has denied that it issued this letter, RdK said.
contract to reopen the Isla refinery and the asso- The Isla refinery was operated by PdVSA
ciated Bullenbaai products terminal. until the operator’s long-term lease expired in
The refinery has a throughput capacity of December 2019. The plant has since remained
335,000 barrels per day (bpd), while the terminal dormant, as has the Bullenbaai terminal.
is capable of storing 17.7mn barrels of refined RdK and CPR reached an agreement last
fuels. CPR has proposed a deal that involves a August to restart the Bullenbaai terminal for
30-year lease of the refinery and the terminal, transportation and storage purposes. According
with the possibility of a 10-year extension. to RdK, negotiations between the two parties
RdK has not disclosed the exact nature of its regarding a separate contract for the operation
concerns. It has said, according to Argus Media, of the refinery are proceeding smoothly and in a
that one of the potential parties to the Isla refin- transparent manner.
ery deal “has presented some documents that CPR is actually is the fifth non-Venezuelan
looked suspicious” but has withheld the iden- entity that has sought to acquire access to the Isla
tity of the investor in question. It has also stated refinery. RdK also held negotiations with Chi-
that there is no evidence to suggest that CPR is na’s Guangdong Zhenrong Energy (GZE), Saudi
directly involved in such forgeries. Arabia’s Motiva and the Klesch Group, a pri-
Nevertheless, RdK stressed that its concerns vately held international industrial commodity
were not misplaced, as an inspection of the doc- firm, before starting discussions with Curaçao
uments by the Dutch state forensic investigator Oil Refinery Complex (CORC) in 2020. It then
NFI had “confirmed the forgeries.” Since the ini- brought those discussions with CORC – which
tial identification of this issue, NFI has “inter- is led by Dick and Doof, a Dutch contractor that
cepted dozens of forged documents,” it said. previously provided services to Caribbean and
One of these fraudulent documents is what Latin American downstream facilities owned by
appears to be a “comfort letter” from a Lon- Shell (UK) – to an end in 2021 before making
don-based international bank claiming that one another effort to find a new partner. ™

VENEZUELA
Venezuelan crude oil exports down in 2022

VENEZUELA saw oil exports decline in 2022 was largely the result of US-imposed trade
despite assistance from its ally Iran, according to restrictions, plus infrastructure outages and
shipping data and documents cited by Reuters. rising competition in Asia, the key market for
The year-on-year drop in export volumes Venezuelan crude, the news agency said.

Week 02 11•January•2023 www. NEWSBASE .com P7