By ANDY HOFFMAN and FIONA MACDONALD

Kuwait Petroleum Corp. is close to a deal to sell its Q8 Europoort refinery in Rotterdam, with a bidder owned by private-equity firms Carlyle Group and Riverstone Holdings the main contender, said people familiar with the matter.

The final decision is expected this month, said two people, asking not to be identified as the process is private.

HES International BV, a storage and logistics company, is the leading bidder in an auction of the 88,000-bpd refinery that got seven expressions of interest, one of the people said. Riverstone owns 70% of HES and Carlyle International Energy Partners the rest after they bought out HES Beheer shareholders to take the company private in 2014.

“We are interested,” Harry van Rietschoten, HES executive director, said by phone, confirming the coal and oil company had bid for the refinery. He declined to comment on specific details of the offer because of a confidentiality agreement.

HES plans to cut the plant’s refining capacity and convert some to storage, according to the two people. That would mean job cuts at the facility, which employs about 350 people.

A rival offer from a Swiss company that owns and operates refineries in Europe has pledged to preserve jobs by keeping more of the refinery operating, one of the people said. That cash bid is understood to be lower than HES’s, the person said.

“If the Swiss company is planning investments in the refinery, their bid will be better for the workforce,” said Egbert Schellenberg, a director of the Dutch Trade Union Federation, which represents staff at the Europoort refinery.

Kuwait’s national oil company canceled plans last year to invest about $1 billion to upgrade the refinery, the smallest in Rotterdam harbor, and instead put the plant up for sale. 

While profit margins for European refineries have improved after crude prices fell to a six-year low in March of about $60/bbl, some older plants such as Europoort, built in 1962 and acquired by Kuwait Petroleum in 1983, have still struggled.

Bids are “currently under review,” Alex Meeusen, human resources manager for the refinery, said by phone. The plan is to sell the refinery as a “going concern,” he said.