| Clyde Refinery | |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Province | New South Wales |
| City | Clyde |
| Refinery details | |
| Operator | Shell Refining |
| Owner(s) | Royal Dutch Shell |
| Commissioned | 1926 |
| Capacity | 85,000 bbl/d (13,500 m3/d) |
| Number of employees | 330 |
| Refining units | crude units, visbreaking units, fluid catalytic cracker, light products plants, polymerization plants, amine plants, sulfur plants, impurities treatment plants |
The Clyde Refinery is a crude oil refinery located in Clyde, New South Wales, Australia. It has a refinery capacity of 85,000 barrels per day (13,500 m3/d). It is operated by Shell Refining and owned by the Royal Dutch Shell one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world.[1]
Built in the early 1920s, it has been in operation longer than any other oil refinery in Australia.[1][2] It has been owned by Shell since 1928 and is located in Clyde where the Parramatta River and the Duck River join, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of Sydney.[1] The refinery is also the site of the first polypropylene (PP) plant in Australia, that was commissioned by Shell in 1970–1971 and that has a capacity of 25,000 tonnes per year.[3] There is also another PP plant on site that is owned by LyondellBasell and has an annual production capacity of 170,000 tonnes.[4]
The refinery was shut down in November 2008 for maintenance works and restarted in July 2009 after nine months of repairs.[5]
Shell confirmed on 27 July 2011 that it will shut down refining operations at Clyde and convert the Clyde Refinery and Gore Bay Terminal into a fuel import facility by mid-2013.[6] This followed the initial announcement of intention pending board and employee consultation in April.[7]
The refinery, which has around 330 workers, has a capacity of 85 thousand barrels per day (13.5×103 m3/d) and is supplied with oil from the nearby Gore Bay Terminal, also operated by Shell since its opening, located on a 10 hectares (25 acres) plot of land in Greenwich and opened in 1901. The oil transfer is made via an 19 kilometres (12 mi) underground pipeline that has a 300 millimetres (12 in) diameter.[1] The refinery processes around 4 million tonnes of crude oil annually.[1] The refinery usually supplies 40% of the fuel consumed in Sydney and around 50% of the fuel consumed in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.[8]