Delta Air Lines making bid for ConocoPhillips’ Trainer refineryPublished: Tuesday, April 03, 2012By KATHLEEN E. CAREY kcarey@delcotimes.comDelta Air Lines is interested in purchasing ConocoPhillips Trainer refinery and best-case scenario estimates extrapolate that the facility could be up and running as early as July, but more likely the fall, industry experts said today.
I thought you could have kissed that one goodbye, Denton Cinquegrana, senior markets editor of the Oil Price Information Service, said of the 185,000 barrel per day facility.
In September, ConocoPhillips idled the refinery due to product imports, weakness in motor fuel demand, costly regulatory requirements and the 700 employees were terminated in January. Since then, Cinquegrana said the Atlanta, Ga. airline company has emerged with serious interest in the site.
The one interesting bid on Trainer is Delta Air Lines, he said, adding that it would be the first case of an airline owning a refinery.
Cinquegrana said some airline industry officials discussed the potential of owning their own petroleum production facility following Sept. 11, 2001, but this would be the first instance of that actually occurring.
He explained that the company would need to have an agreement or partner with another company to deal with the excess petroleum products such as heating oil and gasoline that they wouldnt need.
I still think a lot of hurdles have to be cleared to get this thing up and running, Cinquegrana said.
Yet, he said it could happen and the plant could be operating again.
The most aggressive estimate on Trainer was sometime in July, Cinquegrana said. I think its going to be more like late summer (or) early fall should a deal actually happen.
A Radnor-based sand supplier is one of the top bidders for the Sunoco Inc. Philadelphia refinery, according to several news organizations.
Both Reuters and the Oil Price Information Service have identified Preferred Sands LLC as having made a bid on the 335,000-barrel per day facility. In September, Sunoco executives announced that the plant would be closed by July if a new owner wasnt found because of poor financial performance.
The reports also indicate that United Refining in Warren, Pa. has also expressed interest in the Philadelphia refinery. Preferred Sands is an owner-operated company that was launched in 2007 to deliver high quality silica sand products mainly for the hydraulic fracturing industry.
Its first silica mine was in Genoa, Neb. and, in January, the company spent more than $200 million to acquire the assets of Winn Bay Sand, which include mines in Blair, Wisc. and in Hanson Lake, Saskatchewan. That move made it the largest fracking sand producer in Canada and one of the top three in the United States.
Preferred Sands describes itself as a privately-held company that leverages a family-owned philosophy to acquire businesses that share a common theme: market scarcity that other investors have overlooked with the opportunity to add value through a creative, community-minded vision.
