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Chevron to sell Anchorage fuel operations Terminal at Port of Anchorage will take name of buyer, Crowley Maritime; deal is expected to close in second quarter of 2011 Wesley Loy For Petroleum News
Chevron Corp. is selling its fuel products terminal operations in Anchorage to Crowley Maritime Corp.
The deal came to light in a May 2 public notice from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
The notice said Crowley has applied to renew the oil discharge prevention and contingency plan, or C-plan, for the Chevron Products Co. Anchorage terminal “due to the transfer of ownership.”
“Here’s what I can tell you about sale at this point in time,” Sean Comey, a Chevron spokesman at the company’s San Ramon, Calif., headquarters, told Petroleum News in a May 4 e-mail. “We can confirm that we have entered into an agreement to transfer our fuel products terminal operations at our refined products terminal in Anchorage, Alaska (“Chevron’s Anchorage Terminal”) to Crowley. We anticipate this transaction to be completed in the second quarter of 2011.”
Many details to work out Comey continued: “The transfer of Chevron’s Anchorage Terminal operations to Crowley will help to strengthen the cost-competitiveness of our U.S. terminal network while maintaining the necessary scale to effectively meet the needs of our customers.
“We still have many details associated with this transaction to work out, including the effect of the transfer on our employees at Chevron’s Anchorage Terminal. With the uncertainty at this time, we understand the concerns of our employees and we will do all we can to work through this transition process efficiently and expeditiously.”
The terminal is located at the Port of Anchorage and handles jet fuel with four employees, Comey said.
Crowley Maritime is an international transportation and logistics company based in Jacksonville, Fla. The company is involved in petroleum transportation, distribution and sales, with extensive and longstanding operations all around Alaska.
Crowley also operates a fleet of tanker escort tugs at Valdez, terminus of the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
The DEC notice said the C-plan will demonstrate the applicant’s “ability to plan to contain, control and clean up oil discharges from what will become the Crowley Anchorage Terminal.”
The C-plan will cover a tank farm with a capacity of about 20.7 million gallons, the DEC notice said.
The C-plan application is out for a 30-day public comment period.
No word on Cook Inlet sale “The focus for both Crowley and Chevron is the safety and security of the current operation and making a smooth uninterrupted transition of ownership that is transparent to the customers of the terminal,” said Mark Miller, a Crowley spokesman in Jacksonville.
Chevron’s Comey said the anticipated transfer of the terminal operations won’t impact product supply to Chevron’s customers.
Comey did not address whether the terminal deal somehow figures into Chevron’s stated plans to sell all its oil and gas assets in Cook Inlet, on which Anchorage is located. The company in October said it was offering the properties as a single package.
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