The logic was geographic. Venezuela's Lake Maracaibo region held enormous oil reserves, but the shallow lake could only accommodate small tanker ships - lake tankers with a capacity of about 2,600 tons each. Aruba, sitting just 27 kilometers off Venezuela's coast, offered deep-water access for the large ocean tankers that would carry refined products to world markets. In 1927, the company - originally called Compania Mexicana de Petrol el Aquila - secured a broad coastal strip at Druif Beach and began building. Construction workers lived in tents and temporary sheds on the beach while they erected an F-shaped steel pier extending 400 meters into the open sea. The pier was engineered to handle two ocean tankers and two lake tankers simultaneously, creating a relay system: small ships brought crude from Venezuela, large ships carried refined fuel out to the world. By May 1928, the refinery was operational, producing fuel oil, gas oil, diesel, and gasoline. The Taratata Shipyard, built as the first structure on site, had already become a landmark.

At full capacity, Arend processed 3,000 tons of crude daily through a Trumble distillation facility - a less efficient technology than the crude oil distillation units used at larger refineries, but effective enough for the scale. The refinery's tank farm held 350,000 cubic meters of oil products. A boiler house supplied steam, a power plant generated electricity for the facility and for Oranjestad, and an oxygen and ice factory served both industrial and domestic needs. The company employed 440 people, mostly Aruban workers who commuted daily by truck from across the island. The transformation of Oranjestad was profound. Three banks opened to service the new economy. Trading houses multiplied. A public school and a Catholic school were established. English began competing with Dutch as the dominant language, reflecting the international workforce oil attracted. Isaac Wagemaker, lieutenant governor from 1928 to 1945, worked to ensure the island kept pace with changes that were arriving faster than anyone had planned for.

February 16, 1942. The German submarine U-156 surfaced near Aruba and launched torpedoes at ships anchored near the island's oil refineries. One torpedo struck an American vessel at the Arend pier, but the ship had been emptied of fuel - it sustained heavy damage but stayed afloat without catching fire. Another torpedo buried itself in the sand at Druif Beach. The next morning, Captain Robert Briskin of the U.S. Army and a Dutch officer inspected the beached torpedo and declared it a dud. When Dutch demolition experts attempted to disassemble it on February 17, the torpedo detonated. Four Dutch Navy marines died in the blast. Meanwhile, the fishermen of Oranjestad had launched their boats during the attack itself, pulling survivors from damaged tankers and ferrying them to shore. The U-boat attack underscored what strategic planners already knew: Aruba's refineries were critical infrastructure, and the Caribbean was no longer remote from the war.

By late 1942, the Arend refinery faced a problem it could not engineer away. The war demanded aviation fuel, and the Trumble distillation process could not produce it. Priority shifted to refineries with the right equipment - CPIM in Curacao and Lago Oil on Aruba's eastern end. Arend's crude oil supply was redirected, and its employees found temporary work at the competing facilities. The refinery shut down, though its massive tank farm remained useful as overflow storage for its neighbors. When the war turned favorable in early 1945, Arend's workers returned. The facilities were restored to operational condition within a month, and production resumed at full capacity. Some storage tanks were later relocated to Venezuela and Colombia as post-war demand shifted, but the refinery maintained 350 million liters of storage capacity. In 1935, a cracking unit had been added alongside the Trumble facility, and by 1938, tank storage had doubled to over 700,000 cubic meters. The Eagle adapted.

One kilometer east of Punta Braboe, the company built Eagle Village - approximately 24 wooden bungalows arranged around a central clubhouse. About forty employees and their families lived there, close enough to the refinery to respond to emergencies, far enough to maintain the illusion of separation between work and life. The company provided tennis courts, an outdoor cinema, a swimming pool, a golf course, and a sports field. There was a company hospital until 1945, after which a clinic handled routine care and the San Pedro Hospital in Oranjestad managed anything serious. The architecture of the headquarters building tells a layered colonial story: covered verandas and wide roof overhangs borrowed from Dutch East Indies building traditions, combined with English architectural styles found in the Leeward Islands and the American South. The architect remains unidentified, though records mention an engineer named Abelard Soray who worked for Arend from 1927 to 1928 and possessed expertise in house construction and urban planning. The buildings stand as a record of empire's habits - the way colonial powers carried their architectural vocabulary from one tropical outpost to the next, adapting it just enough to claim it belonged.