Oil company Royal Dutch Shell has signed a three-year contract to lease storage tanks at a large terminal in Panama that had been used by U.S. refining company Tesoro Corp, sources involved in the deal told Reuters.
The facility, designed for storage and transshipment of crude oil to tankers, is owned by Petroterminal de Panama (PTP) and includes up to 14 million barrels of storage capacity on the Atlantic and the Pacific shores.
"We have signed a contract with Shell for a three-year period involving all the available space we have," said an official from the Panamanian government.
The contract still needs final approval by the country's Finance Ministry.
(Reporting by Elida Moreno and Marianna Parraga)