Royal Dutch Shell agreed to lease capacity at a large oil terminal in Panama that has been used by US refiner Tesoro Corp , sources involved in the deal told Reuters, gaining much-needed storage for its crude operations. The facility, designed for storage and transhipment of oil, is owned by Petroterminal de Panama and provides up to 14 million barrels of storage capacity, a pipeline network that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and docks for very large tankers.
"We have signed a contract with Shell for a three-year period involving all the available space we have," said an official from the Panamanian government. It was still unclear when the contract would start and the capacity it involved, but the source said the deal will soon be submitted to the Finance Ministry's board of directors for approval.
Access to oil facilities in Central America or the Caribbean is key for producers along the Atlantic basin because a saturated storage network has forced some to sell their crude at very low prices in recent years during the oil-price crash.