Valero San Antonio: Valero Aruba Gone
Topic: EnergyValero Energy CEO has declared that until the margins in the oil products don’t improve, Valero Refinery Aruba won’t open. Translation: Valero Aruba is history.
As written a few week ago, don’t expect Valero to remain on the island for much longer. As soon as the contracts for delivery of products locally expire they will be gone for ever. Other parties have shown interest in acquiring the facilities but nothing has resulted in the negotiations.
Unless Aruba finds oil in its territorial waters, I don’t think having a refinery on a tourism island is such a good idea. As written in the past, I strongly feel that this island must move on focus on more specialized aspects of the refining process of crude oil. Alternative products with much wider profit margins.
Forget about dirty and massive industry of heavy crude oil refining. We really need to start an intelligent debate about this particular topic. It’s been good, but it’s time to move on. The oil industry asks too much and delivers too little for the common islander.
August 28th, 2009 Read more » valero