Macquarie sues Jupiter MLP for $17.5 mln for breach of contract
By Liz Hampton
HOUSTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The trading arm of Australian
bank Macquarie Group has filed a lawsuit against
Jupiter Marketing & Trading, alleging the U.S. firm breached
contracts for oil purchase and storage.
Macquarie is seeking some $17.5 million in fees and
outstanding payments from Jupiter, according to the suit, which
was filed on Thursday in Harris County District Court in
Houston. Jupiter did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Privately held Jupiter is one of several pipeline and
storage suppliers racing to build crude export terminals along
the U.S. Gulf Coast. It has proposed a terminal in Brownsville,
Texas, with 10 million barrels of storage capacity and the
capability to load a Very Large Crude Carrier.
In October, Jupiter said it had secured funding to build a
680-mile crude oil pipeline from West Texas to the U.S. Gulf
Coast, which could transport 1 million barrels of oil per day.
Macquarie is seeking some $3 million to terminate existing
storage and purchase agreements with Jupiter and roughly $14.5
million for outstanding payments of crude oil it sold to
Jupiter.
Under one of the agreements, Macquarie had rights to store
crude at Jupiter's space at a NuStar Energy facility. In
December, NuStar alerted Macquarie that Jupiter was overdue on
storage payments at that terminal, according to the lawsuit.
By early January, the firm told Jupiter it would terminate
its agreements, requesting the termination fee and outstanding
payments for oil purchased.
Representatives for NuStar did not immediately respond to
requests for comment. Macquarie declined to comment.
(Reporting by Liz Hampton; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
2019-01-18 21:04:30
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