United Refining is not involved in the bidding of the other assets of Metro Terminals. This follows URT’s acquisition of Phillips 66’s Riverhead, N.Y., marine petroleum terminal and associated assets in November 2012.

Metro Terminals, a 70-year-old Brooklyn-based heating oil company, filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 27 in New York because of cost overruns and a warm winter in 2012.

An auction was held for the sale of Metro’s assets on Monday, and the results could be finalized later this week.

Cash-strapped Metro, which has 10 different subsidiaries, is one of the largest independent petroleum and energy services terminals in the New York metropolitan area.

Assets on the auction block should include the 10 entities belonging to Metro, including Metro Fuel Oil Corp., Metro Terminals Corp., Metro Terminals of Long Island, Metro Biofuels, Metro Energy Group, Metro Plumbing Services, Apollo Petroleum Transport LLC, Kings Land Realty, Apollo Pipeline and Apollo Petroleum Transport Inc.

Late 2011, Metro opened a 1.06-million-gal capacity biodiesel blending and distribution terminal at Enterprise Park at Calverton, N.Y.

At Calverton in Long Island, Metro has four fuel storage tanks, totaling 1.06 million gal. One tank holds 500,000 gal of diesel, and the second holds the same volume of No. 2 heating oil. The third tank is a grease accumulator tank that will store grease until it is shipped to the Brooklyn site for biodiesel production. Calverton also houses a biodiesel tank.

The Brooklyn heating oil company was able to keep its doors open after securing emergency financing, and deliveries of heating oil and other products continued.

A purchase of Metro Terminals of Long Island (Brooklyn and Calverton) would expand United Refining’s footprint in New York.

“It (United Refining’s Riverhead terminal) permits us to diversify into a non cyclical fee-based business. The terminal itself is well located strategically; access to low-cost and reliable marine transportation is vital to the competitiveness of its customers in petroleum and petrochemical operations,” Catsimatidis said last year after the acquisition of Phillips 66’s terminal in Long Island.

“Riverhead allows access to high capacity deepwater marine facilities that will give them a cost advantage over other locations,” he added. United Refining said that delivered product can then be stored at the Long Island terminal and reloaded onto ocean-going barges for all parts of the East Coast; its primary business is the central and north Atlantic region.

A significant amount of the product is received by ship, stored and delivered by ocean-going barge and tankers, and a minimal amount is delivered by transport truck, primarily for heating fuel for eastern Long Island. 

United Refining’s Riverhead terminal is located on the North Shore of Long Island, N.Y., approximately 80 miles east of New York Harbor.

The facility encompasses 280 acres and has over 5 million barrels of petroleum storage capability. Most of the storage capacity is currently used for dirty products.

The Riverhead marine terminal is utilized as storage and as a trans-shipment hub for crude, heavy fuels, diesel and gasoline, and the offshore marine platform is the only deepwater loading/unloading platform on the U.S. East Coast.

With an operating draft of 64 feet, the terminal’s offshore platform routinely receives Suezmax vessels and is capable of handling VLCC tankers.

Besides the Riverhead terminal, United Refining operates a 70,000-b/d plant in Warren, Pa., and operates 362 c-stores located primarily in western New York and western Pennsylvania.