About

SalTec International, Inc., with offices in Southport, CT, Austin, TX and Mexico City, was created in 1995 by Oliver Kimberly, Stephen Greenfield, Richard Perkins and Lawrence Kelly to pursue the development of salt cavern hydrocarbon storage and waste management projects in Mexico.

Mr. Kimberly had a very successful career as an entrepreneur, corporate executive and investment banker, including the stewardship of Hunter Environmental Services, Ryder Truck Services, Environmental Data Resources (EDR), Air Florida and others.

Mr. Kimberly built Hunter Environmental into a company generating over $120 million in revenue with over 1,800 employees. In addition to its environmental consulting business, Hunter Environmental pursued the development of an industrial park near Houston, TX focused on the use of solution-mined caverns in salt formations for the storage of waste and hydrocarbons. After the sale of Hunter Environmental to Central Illinois Light & Power (CILCORP), Mr. Kimberly joined forces with Stephen Greenfield (former Chairman of Parsons Brinckerhoff and the founder of the world’s leading salt cavern engineering, design and construction firm in the world, PB-KBB, which created the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve consisting of approximately 650 million barrels of oil storage), Richard Perkins (private investor) and Lawrence Kelly to develop a similar industrial park in the Coatzacoalcos region of Mexico. The formation of NAFTA and the Mexican Natural Gas Reform Act of 1995 provided the initiative for the SalTec team to pursue Mexico.

Given the strategic similarities in the level of hydrocarbon and petrochemical activity of the Coatzacoalcos and Houston Ship Channel region and the existence of salt formations, SalTec focused on the Coatzacoalcos area for the development of the industrial park.

In its pursuit of a suitable salt formation for the project, SalTec reached out to Mexico’s largest salt producer, Cydsa. During the 1995-1999 period Cydsa and SalTec evaluated the salt formation and Cydsa’s existing caverns, performed engineering, design and cost estimates of the projects, conducted market studies and met with government officials to assess the feasibility of the proposed projects. In 1999, Cydsa and SalTec joined forces to pursue the development of hydrocarbon storage and waste management projects using the Cydsa property in the Coatzacoalcos region. Since that time, Cydsa and SalTec have worked together to advance the concept of salt cavern hydrocarbon storage and waste management with leading government and industry officials, which has resulted in wide spread government support for the concept and the announcement from Pemex regarding the December 2014 signing of the first contract in Mexico and Latin America for a salt cavern LPG storage project.