An attempt to sell and restart a St. Croix oil refinery that was shuttered last year has stalled, officials said.
The owners of the HOVENSA refinery — the United States-based Hess Oil and the Caracas-based Petroleos de Venezuela — were waiting on the US Virgin Islands’ legislature to pass a bill setting out the terms of the sale. That bill was rejected 11 to three by the territory’s senate, the USVI’s Daily News reported last Thursday.
After the refinery, which was the largest employer in the USVI until its January 2012 closure, shut its doors, USVI Governor John deJongh Jr. and HOVENSA entered into negotiations to help find a new buyer.
The company is free to find a buyer for the facility, but the deal negotiated with the government would have required HOVENSA to hire an “experienced investment banker” to facilitate the process, according to the Daily News.
In exchange, government would have temporarily halved the property taxes assessed annually on the facility from $14 million to $7 million and allowed it to be used as an oil storage terminal in the interim.
See the Aug. 15, 2013 edition for full coverage.
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