SOL station opens its doors in Pembroke

It was a first for St Vincent and the Grenadines as well as SOL last week.

The Barbados-based petroleum company opened a new Shell service station at Pembroke. It is the first one that it has constructed since buying the Shell franchise in the Caribbean in early 2005.

With the construction of the station came training for Vincentian and Barbadian contractors in the latest techniques of fuel facility design and building.{{more}}

Managing Director of SOL, Stewart Gill, told the opening ceremony last week Thursday that this station has state of the art controls to protect the community and the environment. It has double-walled tanks and in the event that both walls are breeched there are sensors and containment pipes and sumps on the perimeter to detect and contain spillage.

“So the highest level of safety has been deployed here at this site to ensure protection of the environment and the community,” Stewart said. “The opening of this station could not have come at a better time because just this week we launched Shell V-Power gasoline the highest performance gasoline ever marketed by Shell in this market.”

SOL was formed in 2003 and two years later it purchased Shell’s network in the Eastern Caribbean, Suriname, Guyana, and Belize. In August this year it purchased Shell Puerto Rico bringing to 14 the number of Caribbean countries in which it is operating.

The Pembroke station brings to 289, the number of stations owned by SOL.

The entire SOL staff in St Vincent and the Grenadines is Vincentian. Stewart said that SOL recognised that each country had its own culture and this had figured prominently in the organisational structure of the company. And with the business being totally Caribbean owned, SOL had the power to make key decisions in order to be customer-centric.