A new liquids terminal near the coastal city of Barranquilla, Colombia, has received its first shipment of refined products and is distributing them to the country's domestic market, the company said late Friday.
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Cadastre-se agora"We are storing clean products to serve the growing domestic demand. Our position on the Magdalena River, only 11 miles from the river mouth, gives us a strategic advantage to serve this market via truck and barge connectivity with Colombia's central region, where main consumption areas are located," Chief Commercial Officer Jay Reynolds said in an email.
Nestled near the mouth of Magdalena River, which flows out to the Caribbean Sea, the Palermo Tanks, as the project is known, was approved by the country's Mining and Energy Ministry in 2014 to hold up to 2.5 million barrels of storage for clean products, crude, asphalt, vegetable oil and petrochemical streams. The petroleum liquids are able to flow to and from a 50,000 dwt dock with approximately 12.5 meters of draft and have access to multiple Colombian cities through the Magdalena River, which runs through the middle of the country.
"We are now focused on increasing tankage and, generally speaking, our footprint in Latin America," said Manuel Rubiano, the terminal's director of business development.
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Palermo Tanks' Phase I was scheduled to be completed during fourth-quarter of 2015; however, the terminal "experienced some delays with final procurement and some civil works related to the liquids dock. We are now fully operational and focusing on increasing tankage for hydrocarbons exports, clean products imports as well as growing volumes in palm oil," Reynolds said.
The completion of Phase I included the construction of two 176,000-barrel storage tanks, blending and heating services, a truck rack and a laboratory.
Palermo Tanks is being supplied by an undisclosed US-based trading company with international operations. It received its first vessel carrying supplies April 19 and is now dispatching product to the domestic market via truck, Reynolds said.
The Palermo Tanks project is a joint venture by Colombia's terminal and maritime logistics company Grupo Coremar and US terminal company Zenith Energy. Houston-based Zenith won backing from US private equity company Warburg Pincus with a $600 million line of credit in 2014 after securing a contract to build the multiproduct liquids terminal.
The tanks were constructed within Grupo Coremar's 426-acre Palermo Port Society site. The completion of Phase I involved the construction of two storage tanks, each able to store up to 176,000 barrels of crude oil, refined products, chemicals, or vegetable oil, according to Rubiano.
Colombia's only two refineries -- the 224,800 b/d Barrancabermeja and 165,000 b/d Reficar -- together have a total storage capacity of 8.4 million barrels.
--Luciano Battistini, luciano.battistini@platts.com
--Edited by Jason Lindquist, jason.lindquist@spglobal.com