Tradewinds: Gunvor Buys Antwerp Refinery

“Gunvor has bought a refinery in Antwerp from Petroplus, the Swiss refiner that filed for insolvency in January. The Russian oil trader expects the deal to be completed within six to eight weeks and says it intends to restart the plant as soon as possible. The Antwerp refinery can process more than 100,000 barrels a day of oil, and has storage capacity of more than 1.2m cbm . . . The Geneva-based outfit is best known for its tanker activities out of Russia through wholly owned chartering outfit Clearlake Shipping. Last year Clearlake was just outside the top ten of largest spot charters of dirty tankers, according to figures compiled by Poten & Partners. It was the sixth largest spot charterer of aframax tankers and the tenth largest spot charterer of panamax tankers. In 2010, the most recent figures available, it Clearlake was among the top ten largest charters of clean tanker tonnage. Shell was number one.”