Blending petrol at New York harbour

Statoil’s marketing company in the USA has entered an agreement with Motiva Enterprises to expand and modify the product storage at New York harbour.

According to Sigurd Jansen, vice president of the product sales unit in oil trading and supply, the agreement will provide Statoil with a better opportunity to ship surplus components from Europe to the USA. These can be blended with components from other geographical markets into finished petrol products.

Mr Jansen says that it is “financially challenging to ship petrol from Europe to the USA”. The petrol is supplied mainly from Statoil’s refinery at Mongstad near Bergen.

To ensure the sale of the petrol, Statoil has entered an agreement with Amerada Hess to supply up to 50 million litres of petrol per month from storage at New York harbour.

Statoil has shipped oil products, mostly petrol, to the American market since 1988. According to William Brendeford, senior products trader in Statoil Marketing & Trading (US), an agreement for leasing storage capacity for petrol in New York harbour was signed in 1996, after a period of low earnings on shipping petrol to the USA.

“When we got access to the storage Statoil took a step closer to the end user, whilst at the same time we achieved a positive margin on the sale of petrol,” says Mr Brendeford.