Blueknight Energy Partners announced it was expanding its asphalt business with the acquisition of two asphalt terminalling facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Dumfries, Virginia. The Oklahoma City company is buying the assets from Axeon Specialty Products. Blueknight also struck up a deal with Axeon Marketing LLC for a long-term storage, throughput and handling agreement.
“We highly value our relationship with Axeon and are pleased that we can continue helping them service their customers by adding the Wilmington and Dumfries locations to our existing asphalt terminal network. In addition, we have entered into a new long term storage agreement which also includes our existing terminals in Gloucester City, New Jersey, and Newport News, Virginia,” said Blueknight Energy Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurley.
The Wilmington facility includes about 260,000 barrels of asphalt storage and 70,000 barrels of light fuel storage with water access. The Dumfries facility include approximately 87,000 barrels of asphalt storage and 468,000 barrels of light fuel storage with water access along with connections to Plantation Pipeline. Blueknight is using its existing credit facility to finance the transaction, however did not disclose the price.
The move expands Blueknight’s asphalt and residual oil storage network to a total of 45 terminals located in 23 states.
“This transaction continues to build on Blueknight Energy’s strength of operating product terminals and the new facilities will be incorporated into our coast to coast terminal network. Business will continue as usual and we expect to retain the current terminal employees. This transaction is also expected to be immediately accretive to our unitholders,” added Hurley.
