NuStar Energy has closed the sale of its Texas City terminals to BWC Terminals for US$106 million (€91 million).
BWC first announced that it had reached an agreement to buy the Texas City terminals from NuStar early in November 2020. Terminal 1 has a total capacity of 2,681,000 bbl, storing clean products, black oils, blendstocks, vacuum gas oil (VGO), and chemicals, as well as rail and truck loading and unloading facilities and three ship/barge docks. Terminal 2 has a total capacity of 131,000 bbl, storing light petroleum products. It has one barge dock with vehicle access.
Brad Barron, president and CEO of NuStar, says that while the decision to sell the terminals was ‘difficult’, the company will be able to use the proceeds to improve its debt metrics and self-fund a larger portion of its capital programme.
‘While the Texas City terminals are great assets with outstanding operations and employees, the location and unique configuration of these terminals were no longer synergistic with NuStar’s strategies for our other Gulf Coast assets. For this reason, we determined that the best path forward for the continued success of these facilities and NuStar was to allow them to be acquired by an entity that can take advantage of the terminals’ niche petrochemical and petroleum capabilities. We are pleased that BWC Terminals has just such a business model,’ Barron adds.
Mike Suder, CEO of BWC, says that the company is ‘excited’ to finalise the acquisition, which complements BWC’s existing terminal network storing hydrocarbons, chemicals, renewables, and agricultural products across North America.
‘The addition provides increased growth opportunities in the Gulf Coast region to optimise and further develop our operational capabilities in support of the supply chain needs of our customers,’ he says.