hovensa closing

To stiphy

Love your comments on the local government......get rid of all those useless senators........on the education points I agree there is no excuse, maybe some of those welfare dependents who dont make an effort to do nothing....not even send their kids to school..... But wait for handouts should be monitored to keep the kids in school.....if they dont then pull the welfare program from them. Or why not give the welfare aide for a certain amount of designated time like 24 months and Let them get off their rear and find something to do with respect to my elders who needs it and cant work.

Now that hovensa is basically belly up, dpnr, lawyer and other entity who thought they had to get a bite of the apple is probably left with jaws dropped to chest. I bet if you walk thorough WAPA plant you gon find more violations than Hovensa ......but dpnr or EPA ain't up their rear. Oh I mustttttttt insert.........There is one attoney here on the island who sued hovensa every week as if it was part of her normal practice (i aint callin no name) long term all the law suits did no justice except contribute to 1800 unemployed workers. Well I guess now we have nothing. Oh well government appointed officials here on st croix always has this dumb schupid comment every time something new is introduced " this the virgin islands not the states".

Sometimes i wonder if the people here ever figure out the purpose of electing goverment officials......it's to run the government..........Not run down the government

Hey stxmyhome.....thanks for the laugh......I read that and wondered.? after 5 edits ....that was still a mess.Nice job.Hit the spell check,grammar check,make sense check button next time;)

You understood it though.......good....got my point across

Texaco - Port Arthur never closed it's doors during or before any of the mergers it's been through. We never missed one days work or a paycheck. We've now been through 3 company changes since Texaco and are in the process of starting up a huge expansion project that will bring our capacity up over 600,000 Barrels/day throughput. A lot of this success was due to employee/Union and company desire to turn the refinery around and make it profitable as well as being the largest lube oil manufacturer. Lube oil production kept the doors open and the people worked to make a difference in how the refinery was run. Call it luck or call it good business, either way we haven't missed a day.

There is a lot more to shutting down a refinery than just turning off the utilities and walking away. Environmentally, you have to maintain the stormwater system so you don't put oily run-off water out into the seas. Maybe that will be part of the Oil Terminal conversion. Still, it's not an overnight thing to shut down and you can't just let the facility sit and rust.

Anyone strolled over to the website Crucians in Focus recently and read the opinions and thoughts over there? Quite a juxtaposition from this website. A whole different planet.

www.cruciansinfocus.com

Kerry- Which Refinery dumped all their unions, debts and all in the arly 1990's?

Kerry- Which Refinery dumped all their unions, debts and all in the arly 1990's?

The big refinery in our area that went down around that time was UniCal. It's still down with a skeleton crew keeping up the water systems and such. The old Gulf Oil facility went through several owners starting around then. First Chevron, then Clark and now Valero. Pretty much all of the facilities have kept their unions up and doors open through the ownership changes. I'm not sure which you may be referring to.

Hovensa has a lot ot offer buyers. Deep water port, huge oil storage, coker unit, experienced employees, etc. If they could get an LNG put in for natural gas maybe that would help profits and be a big boost environmentally as well. Also employ more people.

VI Gov.t / WAPA should be working to get a deal going to partner with whoever takes over the refinery to develop an LNG terminal and storage that can serve both the refinery and WAPA. If WAPA would convert to NG on their units, our electric would go down by 1/2.

Hovensa or no Hovensa, an LNG terminal would be a big benefit to the island. Like Lucy said to benefit WAPA and as well to create jobs and give more alternative cleaner energy to the island.

The Governor and Delegate need to go to Washington and beg the Obama adminstration to have the $700mil EPA consent decree lifted/voided or given 10 years to comply.

1.3 Billion in losses over three years. $700M EPA consent decree. slim margins. Overcapacity in the industry. What is the cost to convert to LNPG? This will take a miracle to change.

And how will the LNG be transported to The VI? Who will supply? Will WAPA also convert? If WAPA converts (and pay's their fair share) and the supplier is USA friendly then maybe a small chance this will occur,

And how will the LNG be transported to The VI? Who will supply? Will WAPA also convert? If WAPA converts (and pay's their fair share) and the supplier is USA friendly then maybe a small chance this will occur,

All good questions and not many hard answers. The technology is there, but there are real big costs in the LNG terminal and storage. WAPA conversions are straight forward. This will take outside money. Bill Gates maybe?

I'm not expert but I believe they use refrigerated tankers to keep the gas in a liquified state so that would be no problem getting it to St. Croix. We have one here locally and it seems quite successful. Our port is not as deep as St. Croix so they unload offshore a bit and it is piped in. It's not as large as you would think so this wouldn't be a conversion issue with the old plant but probably something new that could be built in the area around Hovensa and the old aluminum plant.

I also feel that embracing the tourist industry is a no brainer, It is something that everyone has always said the island didn't need as badly as others due to the industry on island. Well maybe it needs a rethink, new resorts don't just bring in the tourist money to those staying there it also increases visibility of the island as a destination which in turn increases flights and ships, that means increase in the need for entertainment, restaurants, shops, the real estate mkt would be healthy, new home owners would need service providers and there would just be more money on island in general. Now I agree that many jobs would be not the skilled jobs that may be leaving but some new skilled ones would be created in the service industry and perhaps some new industries along the lines of Capt M would be interested in an area that had a job force and tourist base. Also some of the jobs lost are skilled workers Hovensa has brought in and without the job will go home, so they will not be part of the local unemployed, although they spend money locally that money could be replaced with tourist money. Even if the refinery stays on line with new owners it might be a good idea to move this direction so all the eggs are not in one basket down the line. Even doing this there will be tough years ahead for STX if the refinery closes, if not it would be good to get plan B in gear for the future. Some will say it won't be enough and maybe at first it will not and maybe if folks don't have the right attitude it will never be but there are plenty of islands and areas around the world with a healthy economy due to tourist monies.

Loungestx,

So, how would you launch this tourism revitalization endeavor? What should happen first? Second? How would this be structured, developed, maintained?

Trivia question: what and when was the last hotel developed on St. Croix? From scratch - not a rebuild of an existing hotel.....

The first step would be to make the process as friendly as possible to those looking do develop/ invest in the area. A streamlined process for building with an upfront code process and business friendly approach is what it usually takes. A local economic development group similar to a zoning board could develop the long and short term plan for certain areas and in conjunction with the tourism board and the Gov. office promote the island as open to this type of investment. There are people that have done this contrived type of developing to great success, I am sure we have all been to little thriving seaside towns with no industry.

was it the divi? i think it opened in 2000 but not sure

Divi was a rebuild; original damaged in HUGO. The Villas across the road are new.

There are 3 resort / casinos for STX that are already approved and ready to go.
None of the projects can raise the needed hundreds of millions needed.
William & Punch and Robins Bay could both work.....Golden on Great Pond would fail in the first year (misquitos, gnats, quicksand, no beach, smelly swamp, etc).

I find it very puzzling that hotels aren't developed on ANY US Virgin Island. Here on STT, they (not sure who the they is) couldn't get a hotel built at Yacht Haven Grande, though that was supposedly part of the original plan. The marina is dying a slow death, because without a hotel, there's not enough traffic to support the restaurants and stores. It's slowly becoming very weather worn for lack of maintenance.

The Renaissance Grand Resort sits decaying since Hurricane Marilyn.

Sapphire Beach Resort is in legal dispute and part of the property is boarded up.

Point Pleasant is getting horrible reviews on TripAdvisor, because the restaurants are/were closed, and they haven't kept up the maintenance.

The Marriott Frenchman's Reef, The Ritz Carlton, Bluebeard's Castle, and maybe one other property, underwent major renovations in the last few years, but they were long overdue.

When I travel to other Caribbean islands, I see/hear about new hotels going up. Puerto Rico is getting a new 6 star hotel soon. They got the W Resort on Vieques a few years ago. The Marriott has almost taken over Aruba. St Kitts is developing a mega yacht marina, I think.

It's like everybody but us was training for the tourism olympics, so we're ending up in last place.

St Kitts, Aruba, Curacao, all have new developments in the works. There are probably others that I'm not aware of.

It's as if the VI is Typhoid Mary for vacation developments. Unless we come up with something very special to offer a vacationer, we may continue to be looked upon as a cruise port and not a land vacation choice.

boyd, are you sure that wasn't grapetree that was damaged? i don't know i am just asking?

We have had a political and social climate that is profoundly opposed to tourism development, especially in the context of building the kind of all-inclusive resorts that have made Aruba and Turks & Caicos and the Dominican Republic such tourist destinations. There have been many developers who have tried through the years and they were put through such an impossible application process that years went by and the funds they had rounded up to invest were spent elsewhere in those intervening years. The few who were granted permits no longer had the $$ available.

If someone does get approved and comes up with funding, it will still take several years of construction to build a resort. The construction jobs would be great (although a drop in the bucket of what's needed) and the eventual service jobs keeping the resort functional are desirable. But how many people are truly holding their breaths expecting several resorts to break ground before the end of the year? Or even one?

Yes, this needs pursued. But tighten your belts for 5 years and then for a few more and possibly for a few more than that. I've been here 8 years and nothing new has been built and many developers have been turned away. Maybe some calls to the senators and governor (like 10 times a day per USVI resident) would get them to push development forward with haste. Yet... the reality is that many of the local residents are profoundly against resort development. It's a conundrum.

Grapetree was also damaged, much worse than the Divi; it has changed owner a few times, the current owner has started rebuilding.