Refineries, locations & stuff....

ok, (he says, talking to himself) thanks to good old wiki, I have found the locations of the refineries around the country - the question is, will we, in Sydney have no BP but Caltex and/or Shell? Or do BP make the effort to come down from Brissie?

locations below:








Oceania

[edit] Australia

[edit] New South Wales
Kurnell Refinery, (Caltex), 124,500 bbl/d (19,790 m3/d),[17] Botany Bay
Clyde Refinery, (Royal Dutch Shell), 100,000 bbl/d (16,000 m3/d), Clyde

[edit] Victoria
Geelong Refinery, (Royal Dutch Shell), 130,000 bbl/d (21,000 m3/d), Geelong
Altona Refinery, (ExxonMobil), about 75,000 bbl/d (11,900 m3/d), Altona North (refinery reduced from 2 trains to 1 train between 2000–2004)

[edit] Queensland
Bulwer Island Refinery, (BP), 90,000 bbl/d (14,000 m3/d), Bulwer Island
Lytton Refinery, (Caltex), 104,000 bbl/d (16,500 m3/d), Lytton

[edit] South Australia
Port Stanvac Refinery, (ExxonMobil), 100,000 bbl/d (16,000 m3/d), Lonsdale (mothballed since 2003 - 239 ha site to be cleaned up and redeveloped for housing)

[edit] Western Australia
Kwinana Refinery, (BP), 138,000 bbl/d (21,900 m3/d), Kwinana

Approximately 25% of petrol sold in Australia is imported, mostly from Singapore. This amount is progressively increasing. The balance is refined in Australia.

The output from refineries is piped to bulk terminals from which it is wholesaled to petrol marketers and sold from their branded service stations. These wholesaling contracts regularly change. This arrangement has existed since I entered the industry in 1960 but it was not well publicised. It caused me to smile when someone told me that their car ran better on one brand more than another.


From Steve's response above you can see that W.A. has only one refinery and SA, NT
& Tas. have no operational refineries. So there are no alternative sources in those regions other than by importation.

So you have no way of knowing the refining source of the petrol you buy at the pump. It can vary from time to time.


The following extract from The Institute of Petroleum provides further detail:

********************************************************

"BULK FUEL SALES: 'INTO' AND 'OUT' OF TERMINALS

There is significant wholesale market competition in Australia.

There is competition for bulk fuel supply both 'into terminal' and 'out of terminal' to wholesalers, resellers, retailers and other major fuel users.
Contracts for sales of fuel 'into' terminals, whether from domestic or international sources, are based on Import Parity Pricing (IPP).

Sales of fuel 'out' of terminals are negotiated on commercial terms mainly to contracted wholesale and retail customers, although spot purchases occur.

Contracts are typically based on IPP or TGP, while spot purchases are on the basis of the Terminal Gate Price (TGP). Terminal operators seek to recover the terminal's capital and operating costs including taxes and other charges. Discounts or premiums may apply to customers depending on the volume, contract term, and any branding or marketing support provided.

Oil companies and independents often buy petroleum products from each other in markets where they do not own refineries or where they do not directly import through hosting arrangements. This is an economic and efficient way to service their customers in these markets. Such transactions are based on IPP and according to the ACCC were on average "only 0.4 cents per litre lower than the IPP in 2009–10".

The underlying pricing approaches in bulk fuel contracts and transactions are generally the same for all wholesale fuel customers."

****************************************************

I was always under the impression that yes they do share resources but that does not mean all fuel is the same as each brand will add their own additives package to bring the fuel upto their own product requirements

What about Esso? They used to put a Tiger in your tank!

How do they measure the potency of diesel? I have read that BP has the highest rating (not sure of the rating name).
You cannot add that to the tanker.

bill

Steve,

I live in Melbourne and have a number of diesel vehicles.

For many years I went out of my way to use BP (No BP refinery in Vic) as I was of the opinion that I had the best result/s all round from BP. Little dearer, but good.

A couple of years ago I was filling up late one night at the BP on Warrigal Road, Chadstone, when a 'no name' tanker pulled in at the back of me and the driver proceeded to go about his delivery procedures.

After paying I had a conversation with him re how much he was carrying, what type of fuel etc etc. He was a very 'chatty' dude and informed that the Tanker was loaded with multple fuels, (Diesel & petrol variations) in seperate compartments in the overall vehicle. I can't remember how much of ea he was carrying , but it was a 'chit load'.

He further volunteered that he was only dropping off what the Service Station had ordered and was going elesewhere that night to make other deliveries. I queried whether these were all BP servero's and he said no, gping to Mobile and independants.

I thought, what a pain having to go around to the different fuel brand pickup points to load the tanker for each Service Station. He just laughed and said it all comes out of the one place - Mobile Altona.

So there you go.

I now fully accept as stated above that the fuel is all delivered from the refinery at the specified Australian Standard. Whether or not the Australian Standard is acceptable or not is a totally different subject and debate.

It's what happens after the refinery delivery to Fuel depots and/or Service Stations that may be a cause for concern, re the subject fuel being contaminated by compromised storage facilities, and/or added contaminants such as the historic Tolulene fiasco some years ago.

So it's Coles 'shopper dockets' now when Shell Servo's available, then BP or Mobile and then whatever happens to be open.

Regards

DD

Just for info.
Shell refinery at Clyde [Sydney] is now closed.
Caltex refinery at Kurnell [Sydney] closes in 2014.
All fuel will be imported to NSW from ?????

PeterH

As most of you know Barrow Island off the NW coast of WA and the surrounding sea has huge reserves of natural gas and light crude oil. Back in the late '60s and 70's I did a fair bit of maintenance work for WAPET (now Chevron owned). The crude that was pulled from the ground was filtered for rocks and moisture and used to run diesel powered plant and vehicles on the island. I thought that would make this crude quite valuable compared to the stuff that required a lot more refining. "Not so" I was told. Apparently basically all you got from this stock was diesel when with the "heavier" crude you got diesel, petrol, lube oil bases and a suite of other minor product. With the current prices this may have changed. I also know that a lot, if not all the fuels used in the mining industry in the NW comes direct from places like Singapore and is shipped to the local ports for distribution

Cheers
Pop

I admit I've reluctantly fallen for the Coles/Shell deal in the past because the Mrs shops there but as long as the independent is competitive, I'd much rather support them. I took notice of people saying 7eleven, Metro, United etc were a bit dodgy and have wrongly, it seems, avoided them. This is good news as far as I am concerned because it must be better for competition and the more, the merrier.