about us

West Indies Petroleum Limited (WIPL) was registered and incorporated in 2012 and became operational in 2013.

West Indies Petroleum Limited has already accomplished the vision of being one of the region's leading fuel companies, and continues to move from strength to strength with a team of visionary leaders and a development plan built on the foundation originally laid by Charles Chambers, Gordon Shirley and Tarik Felix during its inception.

The vision was to set up a company owned by Jamaicans that would not only enter the space of bunkering, which primarily involves the refuelling of vessels, but also to move towards creating a foundation to expand into being regional leaders and one of the main suppliers of fuel to several key sectors, including retail fuel sales and distribution for land operations, turnkey fuel storage solutions and more.

WIPL started out with an old in-shore barge and tug boat which it won via a bid and bought from the State-owned oil refinery Petrojam Jamaica Limited. The founding shareholders and directors of WIPL contracted to refuel a carrier for a regional cruise operating out of Montego Bay, providing heavy fuel oil (HFO) and diesel. This deal would help sustain WIPL for the first few years as we looked to expand further.

WIPL grew steadily, recording significant profits along the way, and, in 2016 it was decided that, in order for this growth to continue, and for the company to fulfil its full potential, it was now time to expand and diversify. The key to that was for WIPL to acquire its own storage facility with significantly substantial storage capacity.

In June 2016, we acquired West Indies Petroleum, South Terminal, a 650,000 barrel fuel storage facility located at Port Esquivel on the south coast of Jamaica. The fuel storage facility at Port Esquivel in St Catherine presented the perfect opportunity, and WIPL successfully negotiated a deal and bought the facility. This key move is what created the opportunity to now diversify as planned, moving from being known mainly as a bunkering entity, to being able to store and distribute fuel and other products across Jamaica and the region as a full service fuel and energy company.

The company also moved to acquire six acres in the vicinity of Kingston Harbour and 20 acres near the Falmouth Pier. WIPL now offered an additional storage of 63,000 barrel tanks on the north coast and a further 72,000 barrels over two tug and barges in Kingston Harbour. Storage has kept growing as has our ability to provide an ever growing scope of service.

Now with the storage terminal facilities and a growing service fleet, WIPL could offer not only Heavy Fuel Oil and Diesel but other clean products to retail clients across Jamaica with an extensive interwoven trucking system. Gas Stations providing fuel for every citizen driving on the island’s roads became clients, along with the huge vessels carrying cargo across the world, and cruise ships calling in at various ports across Jamaica.  Acquiring the storage terminal facility not only shaped WIPL’s position as a major supplier of retail gas stations across the country, establishing West Indies Petroleum as the third major local importer of fuel, but it enabled us to now provide fuel to territories across the Caribbean and LATAM region such as Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, St. Kitts, and Nicaragua.

Since its inception, WIPL has negotiated deals with a number of reputable energy companies around the world to provide a guaranteed product source for all of WIPL operations including bunkering, onshore retail and commercial fuel sales and bulk regional fuel distribution across the Caribbean and LATAM.