North Atlantic Oil Refinery
The North Atlantic Oil Refinery is located at the head of Placentia Bay. It has a rated crude production capacity of 115,000 barrels per day and storage capacity of more than seven million barrels of oil and finished fuels. This deep-water facility is capable of receiving ultra-large crude tanker ships of up to 326,000 Dead Weight Tons directly at its dock.
The refinery’s clean fuel hydro-cracker technology takes sour crude from around the world and refines it into cleaner low-sulfur fuels.
North Atlantic Refining has invested more than $850 million in upgrades since 1994 and currently employs approximately 600 workers. Exports from the refinery exceed$4 billion per year. While some of the refinery’s output is sold in the province, most is marketed in the Northeastern United States.
As of October 2006, North Atlantic is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Calgary, Alberta-based Harvest Energy Trust.
On December 22, 2009, KNOC Canada Ltd., the Canadian subsidiary of Korea National Oil Corporation acquired all the issued and outstanding trust units of Harvest Energy.
Silver Range Financial Partners LLC announced the purchase of the North Atlantic refinery and associated facilities from Harvest Oil Operations Corp., September 5th, 2014.
Petroleum Transshipment
The Newfoundland Transshipment Limited (NTL) terminal located at Whiffen Head, Placentia Bay commenced operations on October 1, 1998. Crude oil is shuttled from the Hibernia and Terra Nova fields to the NTL terminal. From there the crude oil is transported to market by smaller conventional tankers, capable of accessing ports along the eastern seaboard of Canada, the US and the Gulf of Mexico. The terminal provides several advantages to the offshore oil industry, including reducing the number of shuttle tankers needed to service the offshore fields; and, providing greater marketing flexibility by allowing the size of shipment to be tailored to the buyer’s needs.
The Terminal has been operated since 1998 by IMTT-NTL, Ltd. on behalf of NTL. The Newfoundland Transshipment operation employs 43 personnel at Whiffen Head and six management and administrative staff in St. John’s, all of whom are dedicated and skilled local personnel.
The terminal has operated for over eleven years without a lost time or serious environmental incident.
Newfoundland Transshipment Limited (NTL) is an independent company formed to construct and operate the facility. The facility presently has two berths and loading platforms, capable of handling vessels up to 165,000 dwt and six floating roof storage tanks with 500,000 barrels capacity each, for a total of 3.0 million barrels capacity.