Clyde Refinery

Clyde Refinery

Country	Australia
State	New South Wales
City	Clyde
Refinery details
Operator	Shell Refining
Owner(s)	Royal Dutch Shell
Commissioned	1926 (1926)
Capacity	85,000 bbl/d (13,500 m3/d)
No. of employees	330 (2013)
Refining units	crude units, fluid catalytic cracker, light products plants, polymerization plants, amine plants, sulfur plants, impurities treatment plants

The Clyde Refinery was a crude oil refinery located in Clyde, New South Wales, Australia, operating between 1925 and 2013. At the time of its closure it had a refinery capacity of 85,000 barrels per day (13,500 m³/d) and was the oldest operating oil refinery in Australia. It was operated by Shell Refining (Australia) Pty Ltd and owned by the Royal Dutch Shell.

History

The Clyde Refinery was built by John Fell and Company Pty Ltd in 1925.^[1] It was constructed largely from plant relocated from a shale oil refinery the company had operated at Newnes, north of Lithgow.^[2] The refinery was purchased by Shell in 1928, who would continue to operate the refinery throughout the rest of its existence. The refinery was located in Clyde where the Parramatta River and the Duck River converge, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of the Sydney CBD.^[3]

In 1948 Shell opened the first major bitumen refinery in Australia at Clyde, with a production capacity of 35,000 tons p/a of bitumen and 10,000 tons p/a of finished lubricants. The plant had originally been planned in 1938 but construction was delayed due to World War 2.^[4]

The refinery was expanded significantly between 1959 and 1968, as part of Australia's post war industrial growth. This included the construction of a Catalytic Reforming Unit or Platformer in 1958, a High Vacuum Distillation Unit (HVU) in 1962, a Catalytic Cracking Unit (CCU) and a Polymerisation Unit in 1963, an Alkylation Unit and a Sulphur Recovery Unit in 1964 and a new Crude Distillation Unit (CDU) in 1967.^[2] By the end of 1968 the refinery's workforce had grown to over 1,000 employees, including 120 maintenance workers.^[1] Shell deliberately hired a large number of ex-naval personnel to work at the refinery in this period, leading to the site being jokingly referred to as 'HMAS Clyde'.^[2]

The expansion of the refinery continued into the 1970s, albeit at a slower rate, with the commissioning of an additional Platformer Unit in 1971 and a second Sulphur Recovery Unit in 1978.^[2] The refinery was also the site of the first polypropylene (PP) plant in Australia, which was commissioned by Shell in 1970–1971 and had a capacity of 25,000 tonnes per year.^[5]

During the 1980s the refinery went through a period of major rationalisation, with a large number of refinery units closed or merged. Between 1983 and 1984 the refinery's chemical plants were closed, including the Chemical Solvents plant, Hydrocarbon Solvents plant, Epikote plant and Ethylene plant, resulting in redundancies for approximately 120 plant operators, as well as the warehouse storemen who had been responsible for packaging and distributing the refinery's chemical products.^[2]

Shell confirmed on 27 July 2011 that it would shut down refining operations at Clyde and convert the Clyde Refinery and Gore Bay Terminal into a fuel import facility by mid-2013. This was brought forward 9 months and the refinery closed in 2012, then converted into an import terminal.^[6][7] This followed the initial announcement of intention pending board and employee consultation in April.^[8] At the time of its closure in late 2013^[9] the PP plant was owned by LyondellBasell and had an annual production capacity of 170,000 tonnes.^[10]

Refinery operators at Clyde were members of the Coastal Districts Branch of the Federated Engine Drivers and Firemen's Association (FEDFA), which later merged into the CFMEU Mining and Energy Division.^[1] Maintenance employees were represented by the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union and the Electrical Trades Union, while clerical employees were members of the Federated Clerks Union.^[11]

Technical features

The refinery, which had around 330 workers at the time of closure, had a capacity of 85 thousand barrels per day (13.5×10^³ m³/d) and was 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 was made via an 19 kilometres (12 mi) underground pipeline that had a 300 millimetres (12 in) diameter.^[3] The refinery processed around 4 million tonnes of crude oil annually.^[3] The refinery usually supplied around 50% of the fuel consumed in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.^[12]

References