Terminaling sources estimate it would take about 18 months to get the refinery up and running as a commercial oil storage terminal. The Hovensa oil terminal would offer a strategic storage space in the Caribbean, which could be used to build bulk or break bulk of oil cargoes.

The refinery began its shutdown process in January, and operations will slow to a halt in mid-February. “A lot of work would need to be done for the conversion. Vessel draft is also an issue that needs to be addressed,” a source said.
The refinery is designed more for receiving crude for processing and crude storage for PDVSA rather than import/export activities for crude and oil products.
Hovensa would need more pipelines to facilitate oil deliveries to the port.
Currently, the refinery has leased limited storage space to existing tenants, including PDVSA, Hess and Vitol.

Meanwhile, Hovensa is loading this week a 300,000-bbl cargo of clean oil products at its St. Croix refinery for delivery to Yabacoa port in Puerto Rico, possibly the last export cargo out of the soon-to-be shut refinery, industry sources told OPIS on Tuesday. The Puerto Rico-bound cargo is being delivered by an oil major.

On Jan. 31, OPIS reported that Hovensa exported its last product cargo to the U.S. East Coast in mid-January. The last ship was chartered by Hess to load a combo cargo of gasoline and distillates on Jan. 9-11 for delivery to the U.S. East Coast. There has been no shipping or export activity at Hovensa for U.S. East Coast destinations since then.

Hess and Citgo are the main term products lifters at Hovensa. Both companies were seen actively buying gasoline cargoes from Valero’s Pembroke in Wales and North Atlantic’s Come-By-Chance refinery in Canada in the past week.
Hess and Citgo are expected to source a total of about 12-13 cargoes of 300,000 bbl each of gasoline every month or about 3.75 million bbl, based on the average export flow out of that Caribbean facility in 2011.