The Altona Refinery is an oil refinery in Altona North, Victoria, Australia, operated by

ExxonMobil ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...

. The refinery is located next to

Kororoit Creek The Kororoit Creek is a perennial stream, watercourse of the Port Phillip catchment, rising in the outer north western suburbs of Melbourne, in the Australian state of Victoria (Australia), Victoria. Location and features The Kororoit Creek r ...

which is not navigable. Ships unload at a pier on Point Gellibrand in nearby Williamstown. Its output was 14.5 million litres of refined oil products each day. Employing 350 staff (in 2019), it was the smallest refinery in Australia, but also one of the oldest. The facility stopped refining fuel in 2020, and switched to a fuel importing and distribution network.

History

The Altona Refinery construction commenced in 1946 and was completed in 1954. It was constructed by Braun Transworld Corporation for

Standard Vacuum Oil Company The Standard Vacuum Oil Company was an American joint venture by Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Vacuum Oil (aka Mobil) established in 1931 to make and market products in the Far East.Drucker, Peters F. Management, p. 724. Around World War I, ...

. The refinery was upgraded in 2004 to comply with new national fuel standards. By 2005 the refinery was struggling with cutbacks and less demand seeing the facility struggling to survive. There has been some talk of its closure since at least 2014, due to competition from other refineries in Asia. However demand grew and in 2016 production had increased, and the facility was not only being fully utilised, but a $20 million investment saw one of the existing crude oil units get a pre-distillation stage added, enabling the growth of its production of premium products. Demand dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, and output was decreased.

Output of the facility

In 2016 the refinery's overall production was 80,000 barrels per day, 60% of that being petrol, 30%

diesel Diesel may refer to: * Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression * Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines * Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engin ...

and 10%

jet fuel Jet fuel or aviation turbine fuel (ATF, also abbreviated avtur) is a type of aviation fuel designed for use in aircraft powered by gas-turbine engines. It is colorless to straw-colored in appearance. The most commonly used fuels for commercial a ...

, which is piped directly to Melbourne Airport. It also produces LPG. The refinery could produce petrol with 1% benzene and diesel with a maximum

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

content of 50 ppm. To improve quality after the 2004 upgrade, sulfur content in diesel was further reduced to 10ppm. 80 storage tanks were used to store the products produced by the refinery. From here, around 90% of products are transported to

Australia's Yarraville Terminal using a pipeline, with the distribution of the products there by road and rail. LPG produced by the refinery would then go to the Qenos plant, at the Altona chemical complex. It would also go to the

Geelong Geelong ( ) (Wathawurrung: ''Djilang''/''Djalang'') is a port city in the southeastern Australian state of Victoria, located at the eastern end of Corio Bay (the smaller western portion of Port Phillip Bay) and the left bank of Barwon River, ...

LyondellBasell LyondellBasell Industries N.V. is a multinational chemical company incorporated in the Netherlands with U.S. operations headquartered in Houston, Texas, and offices in London, UK. The company is the largest licensor of polyethylene and polypro ...

chemical plant.

Closure and future plans

In February 2021, ExxonMobil announced the Altona Refinery would close and be converted to a fuel import terminal. By 2022, most of the refinery processes had been closed, with some of the facilities that would be integrated into the new import facility remaining. The decommission of the refinery infrastructure was that will not be part of the future terminal was underway in 2022. The site is still an active fuel distribution network, so the decommissioning had to take place in an environment that was still operating as a business, as fuel tanks and truck continued to drop off and collect fuel for distribution. Future decommissioning work is likely to go into the mid 2020s. Plans were for the fuel to be shipped into the deep water port at Point Gellibrand, and then moved to Yarraville.

References

Energy infrastructure completed in 1949 Energy in Victoria (Australia) ExxonMobil Oil refineries in Australia 1949 establishments in Australia 2021 disestablishments in Australia Buildings and structures in the City of Hobsons Bay {{company-stub