April 23, 2003 – Rene Sagebien, the man responsible for helping to establish "bridges" between the community on St. Croix and its largest industry, the Hovensa oil refinery, will retire effective this September, the company announced on Wednesday.
Sagebien, the company's president and chief operating officer since Hovensa became the owner of the refinery in 1998, will leave after 35 years of service at the St. Croix facility, the largest oil refinery in the Western Hemisphere.
Hovensa is a joint venture of Amerada Hess, parent company of Hess Oil Virgin Islands Corp., which owned the refinery from its beginning in the 1960s, and Petroleos de Venezuela, SA,, Venezuela's huge state-owned oil company.
Sagebien "developed not only a great knowledge of the refinery, but a close relationship with the community," company spokesman Alexander A. Moorhead said Wednesday. "He was able to bring bonds between the company and community stronger than they were before."
Moorhead, Hovensa's vice president for government affairs and community relations, said he does not know what Sagebien, who was unavailable for comment Wednesday, plans to do after his retirement.
Stepping in as of this week as chief operating officer is Lawrence Kupfer, who previously was a vice president of Amerada Hess in New York. Moorhead said Kupfer, who will relocate to St. Croix to take the new position, worked at the refinery in the 1990s when HOVIC owned it.
Kupfer will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the oil refinery, a Hovensa release said. He will report to the Hovensa executive committee comprising representatives of Hovensa, HOVIC and PDVSA.
According to Moorhead, Kupfer told senior managers on Tuesday that while there is a "change in leadership, there is not a change in our mission — to be a refinery of world-class performance."
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