Tesoro Corp News

Oil company Royal Dutch Shell has signed a three-year contract to lease storage tanks at a large terminal in Panama that had been used by U.S. refining company Tesoro Corp, sources involved in the deal told Reuters. The facility, designed for storage and transshipment of crude oil to tankers, is owned by Petroterminal de Panama (PTP) and includes up to 14 million barrels of storage capacity on the Atlantic and the Pacific shores. "We have signed a contract with Shell for a three-year period involving all the available space we have," said an official from the Panamanian government. The contract still needs final approval by the country's Finance Ministry.   (Reporting by Elida Moreno and Marianna Parraga)

Colombia, Latin America's No. 4 oil producer, is changing the slate of crudes it exports in a bid to offset the falling prices that are crimping the revenues of its top oil companies. The country has started to deemphasize exports of several heavier crudes, mainly Castilla, and increase offerings of Vasconia, a medium blend that fetches about $3.50, or 8 percent, more per barrel. But to lift output of Vasconia, Colombia must increase imports of products such as naphtha and natural gasoline, which are used as diluents to lighten the barrels for export. State-run Ecopetrol has already started to make the shift and has pushed independent producers in Colombia, including Pacific Rubiales, to do the same, brokers and industry sources said.

U.S. oil refinery managers are going to the mats, literally, during the biggest fight with union workers in 35 years, bedding down for a third strike week that experts and some employees say raises concerns over safety and operations. At the 135,000 barrel-per-day refinery just outside of Toledo, Ohio, run by BP Plc and Husky Energy Inc , most of the nearly 300-person staff have been calling the refinery home since Feb. 9. For the last week, they have slept on recently purchased mattresses inside rental trailers to rapidly respond to any problems and avoid striking workers, sources say. On Tuesday, a van full of washing and drying machines gingerly cut through about a dozen United Steelworkers carrying pickets and walking a strike line at the facility's front gate.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc and the United Steelworkers union (USW) negotiated for hours on Tuesday over a new labor contract for U.S. refinery workers, the company said on day 10 of the biggest refinery walkout since 1980. They have been unable to agree since this year's talks started on Jan. 21 on the size of wage increases and how to monitor worker fatigue, which is tied to accidents and can be handled through overtime pay or adding workers. Shell is the lead representative for oil companies at the negotiations for a three-year pact that would cover 30,000 workers at 63 plants. The union wants wage increases, a tighter safety policy, and reductions in non-union contractors working in refineries.

Chevron Corp has hired an investment bank to identify potential buyers of its 54,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Kapolei on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, a company official said. Deutsche Bank AG was retained to sell the plant, according to another person familiar with the sale, who was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. Deustsche Bank declined to comment. "After much consideration, Chevron's downstream and chemical leadership has decided to engage an investment banking firm to identify potential parties interested in the purchase of our assets in Hawaii. No decision has been made at this time other than to determine the level of interest of potential buyers," Chevron spokesman Braden Reddall said on Friday. The Hawaiian facility is among the company's smallest refineries.

Sheriff Craig Apple assured a room of concerned citizens that county emergency crews were prepared to handle an oil-train accident involving three or four tank cars. Firefighters have been training to combat railcar fires with foam, and evacuation plans are detailed in a 500-page emergency response plan, Apple told residents in a May 12 address. Albany's tracks handle as much as a fourth of the oil pumped from North Dakota's booming Bakken Shale, or up to several 100-car trains per day, each carrying 70,000 barrels. It is one of several spots along North America's new oil-by-rail corridors where residents and officials are restless, following six fiery derailments in the past 10 months.

Mexico's Pemex has quietly begun shipping light Isthmus crude to a variety of West Coast refiners this year, according to U.S. and Reuters data, resuming such sales after a six-year hiatus. The state-run oil company, which exported only about 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Isthmus last year, shipped about 340,000 barrels of the crude to Valero Energy Corp at Benicia, California, in January and February, according to U.S. government data. It sent another 350,000 barrels (48,000 tonnes) to Tesoro Corp in San Francisco in March, according to Eikon's trade flow database based on PIERS data. Pemex then exported another 150,000 barrels to Shell Trading at Anacortes, Washington, in May from the Salina Cruz terminal.

U.S. regulators seeking data from refiners in the effort to gauge the volatility of North Dakota Bakken crude being shipped by rail will have the information by the end of May, according to the industry's trade group. Seventeen companies have anonymously submitted data from more than 1,000 samples to an undisclosed third-party auditor hired by the American Fuel and Petrochemicals Manufacturers (AFPM), the U.S. independent refining industry's trade group, the group's general counsel, Rich Moskowitz, said on Friday. A technical consultant is compiling the information into a report to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation by month's end, Moskowitz said. It will be submitted without companies identifying themselves because they consider the data proprietary.

Oil traders and refiners yesterday were scrambling to move prompt crude oil and product supplies from Asia to the US West Coast, anticipating tighter markets with the closure of BP's Prudhoe Bay oilfield, according to a report on www.gulfnews.com. The shipments gave more lift to Middle East sour crude prices and regional jet fuel differentials, traders said. US refiner Tesoro Corp booked the 80,000-tonne crude oil tanker Cape Avila from Oman to the West Coast in early September, shipbrokers said. About one cargo a month of medium-sour Oman is normally shipped to the West Coast and traders had expected the loss of up to 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of similar-quality Alaska North Slope would drive up US demand for the benchmark grade.

According to a Reuters report, an oil tanker with 360,000 barrels capacity was struck by an ice floe and ran aground today while loading oil products at an Alaska refinery, citing a state official and the refining company. According to the Reuters report, refinery owner Tesoro Corp. did not have an estimate of the amount of product released. The Tesoro-chartered double-hulled tanker, the Seabulk Pride, was loading heavy vacuum gas oil and unleaded gasoline from the refinery in Nikiski, Alaska, on the Cook Inlet. The ship was reportedly aground about half a mile north of the dock, and the vessel's tanks were reported to be secure.