A major Caribbean oil refinery has activated its COVID-19 emergency response plan after a worker tested positive for the virus, casting doubt onto its summer restart.
Management of Limetree Bay Refinery on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands put the worker into a quarantine area along with other people who were found to have been contact with them.
Brian Lever, president and CEO of Limetree Bay, says: ‘The health and safety of our staff, as well as the community, remains a top priority for Limetree and we will continue to take the necessary steps to slow the spread of COVID19 within our facility and our community.’
The facility features 167 storage tanks, with a capacity of around 34 million barrels, along with 11 docks with deep water access.
The worker who contracted COVID-19 was employed as part of a 3,000-strong team hired to refurbish and restart St Croix’s former Hovensa refinery with a US$2 billion overhaul.
The Limetree Bay facility was expected to start commercial processing operations in June or July after overcoming delays caused by corrosion.
Shuttered in 2012, the plant was picked up by Arclight Capital Partners and Freepoint Commodities, whose investment aims to restore a production level of 210,000 barrels of oil per day.
