In a nearly $9 million deal, a subsidiary of a publicly traded energy company bought a Wilmington asphalt facility on River Road, according to an announcement this week.

Blueknight Energy Partners L.P. (Nasdaq: BKEP), a company focused on providing services for companies that produce, distribute and market crude oil, asphalt and other petroleum products, announced Tuesday in a news release that a wholly owned subsidiary of BKEP bought two asphalt terminalling facilities, one at 3345 River Road in Wilmington and the other in Dumfries, Virginia. The seller of both was Axeon Specialty Products.  

BKEP paid $8.9 million for the Wilmington facility, according to a deed recorded in New Hanover County. The release said that the Wilmington facility includes about 260,000 barrels of asphalt storage and 70,000 barrels of light fuel storage with water access. Those numbers for the Dumfries facility are 87,000 barrels of asphalt storage and 468,000 barrels of light fuel storage with water access, along with connections to Plantation Pipeline.

In addition, the announcement said, BKEP has entered into a long-term storage, throughput and handling agreement with Axeon Marketing LLC.

Axeon, or its predecessor, has been a customer of BKEP since 2009 and currently leases other BKEP-owned facilities in the region, the news release said. Axeon will continue supplying various products and services to its existing customer base out of the Wilmington and Virginia facilities, according to the release. 

“We highly value our relationship with Axeon and are pleased that we can continue helping them service their customers by adding the Wilmington and Dumfries locations to our existing asphalt terminal network. In addition, we have entered into a new long-term storage agreement, which also includes our existing terminals in Gloucester City, N.J., and Newport News, Va.,” said Mark Hurley, BKEP’s CEO, in the release.

“This transaction continues to build on BKEP’s strength of operating product terminals, and the new facilities will be incorporated into our coast-to-coast terminal network," he said. "Business will continue as usual and we expect to retain the current terminal employees. This transaction is also expected to be immediately accretive to our unitholders.”