Chevron To Find Buyers for Hawaiian Refinery

Chevron Corp has hired an investment bank to identify potential buyers of its 54,000 barrel-a-day refinery in Kapolei on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, a company official said.

Deutsche Bank AG (DB) was retained to sell the plant, according to another person familiar with the sale, who was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. Deustsche Bank declined to comment.

"After much consideration, Chevron (CVX)'s downstream and chemical leadership has decided to engage an investment banking firm to identify potential parties interested in the purchase of our assets in Hawaii. No decision has been made at this time other than to determine the level of interest of potential buyers," Chevron spokesman Braden Reddall said on Friday.

The Hawaiian facility is among the company's smallest refineries.

The search for a buyer was previously reported by Bloomberg.

In 2009, the San Ramon, California-based company weighed closing the refinery and then later considered turning it into a terminal, but eventually decided against both options.

Chevron plans to sell about $10 billion of assets in the next three years, up from about $7 billion in asset sales in the previous three years.

Chevron Chief Executive Officer John Watson told analysts in March most of the new asset sales would involve uncompetitive parts of the company's oil and natural gas exploration and production business.

Closing the plant would leave Hawaii with a single 93,500-barrel-a-day refinery that Par Petroleum Corp bought from Tesoro Corp last year.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Jessica Resnick-Ault and Tom Brown)