WILLEMSTAD - Negotiations with the Swiss Klesch Group have failed. On Friday evening, the owner of the refinery, the Curaçao Refinery (RdK), reported that talks about the refinery's takeover have ended.
900 employees are on the street for the time being, there is also no work for supply companies, such as Curoil.
Due to the termination of the contract with PdVSA, Curoil, in collaboration with RdK, has worked out a transition plan with the aim of guaranteeing the fuel supply until a new operator of the refinery has started. This plan costs approximately 10 million guilders per month.
Curaçao initially expected this to be the case for a maximum of six months, assuming that the Klesch Group would start the refinery by 1 July at the latest. It has now been established that this will not happen in the second half of this year either, because the Klesch deal has been canceled. RdK is diligently looking for another operator. In the meantime, the government of Curaçao has also included an amount for investments in a financing request to the Netherlands to reduce Curoil's dependence on a revolving Isla and to significantly reduce the monthly costs.
The costs of the transition plan would amount to 60 million guilders for six months, whereby Curaçao has decided to include these costs in all regulated fuel prices for a period of approximately four years. The result of this decision is that the 60 million must be pre-financed.
This would be done by Curoil (30 million) and by RdK (30 million). However, Curoil did not have 30 million in cash and applied for bank financing, which was refused by the house banker MCB Bank. The MCB refers to the uncertain situation due to Covid-19. That is why Curaçao has requested financing from the Netherlands. For the time being, RdK does have sufficient liquid assets. Only from March this year will the 60 million in fuel prices be processed by a storage of 5.1 cents per liter of petrol and diesel and 5 guilders per 100 lbs of LPG propane gas and 1 guilder per 20 lbs of gas. Despite the processing of the said storage, the prices of both petrol and diesel on Curaçao are clearly lower than on Aruba and Bonaire.