Country Australia City Clyde Owner(s) Royal Dutch Shell | Province New South Wales Operator Shell Refining Commissioned 1926 (1926) | |
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The Clyde Refinery was a crude oil refinery located in Clyde, New South Wales, Australia. It had a refinery capacity of 85,000 barrels per day (13,500 m3/d). It was operated by Shell Refining and owned by the Royal Dutch Shell one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world.
Contents
History
Built in the early 1920s, it was in operation longer than any other oil refinery in Australia. It had been owned by Shell since 1928 and was located in Clyde where the Parramatta River and the Duck River join, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of Sydney.
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. This followed the initial announcement of intention pending board and employee consultation in April.
The refinery was also the site of the first polypropylene (PP) plant in Australia, that was commissioned by Shell in 1970–1971 and had a capacity of 25,000 tonnes per year. At the time of its closure in late 2013 the PP plant was owned by LyondellBasell and had an annual production capacity of 170,000 tonnes.
Technical features
The refinery, which had around 330 workers, had a capacity of 85 thousand barrels per day (13.5×103 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. The refinery processed around 4 million tonnes of crude oil annually. The refinery usually supplied around 50% of the fuel consumed in New South Wales, Australia's most populous state.