The Llandarcy Oil Refinery, also known as the National Oil Refinery, BP Llandarcy and Skewen refinery, was the United Kingdom's first

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...

, initially opened by the

Anglo-Persian Oil Company The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number ...

(renamed the

Anglo-Iranian Oil Company The Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was a British company founded in 1909 following the discovery of a large oil field in Masjed Soleiman, Persia (Iran). The British government purchased 51% of the company in 1914, gaining a controlling number ...

from 1935 and the British Petroleum Company from 1954) on 29 June 1922, although operations had begun on 1 July 1921.''BP Oil'', British Petrolum Co Ltd, c. 1976 Before this, the only oil refined in the UK came from Scottish

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

History

The refinery cost £3 million and eventually covered an area of about 400 hectares. Construction began in February 1919, and included construction of a new railway line. There were east and west facing connections on the Swansea District Line to the west of Jersey Marine Junction North. By the 1990s there were eight sidings and an unloading dock. The sidings were abolished by 2010. The refinery was formally opened by

Stanley Baldwin Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, (3 August 186714 December 1947) was a British Conservative Party politician who dominated the government of the United Kingdom between the world wars, serving as prime minister on three occasions, ...

, the

President of the Board of Trade The president of the Board of Trade is head of the Board of Trade. This is a committee of the His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Privy Council of the United Kingdom, first established as a temporary committee of inquiry in the 17th centu ...

. It was named after

William Knox D'Arcy William Knox D'Arcy (11 October 18491 May 1917) was a British businessman who was one of the principal founders of the oil and petrochemical industry in Persia (Iran). The D’Arcy Concession was signed in 1901 and allowed D'Arcy to explore, o ...

, the founder of Anglo-Persian. Llandarcy was built as a model village to house refinery workers. In the 1950s about 2,600 people worked at the refinery. When opened, it was producing around 150,000 gallons of petrol a day. By 1960, it was refining 8 million tons of crude oil a year and was the third biggest oil refinery in the UK after

Fawley Refinery Fawley Refinery is an oil refinery located at Fawley, Hampshire, England. The refinery is owned by Esso Petroleum Company Limited, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil Corporation, which acquired the site in 1925. Situated on Southampton Water, it was ...

and

Lindsey Oil Refinery Lindsey Oil Refinery is an oil refinery in North Killingholme, North Lincolnshire, England owned and operated by the Prax Group. It lies to the north of the Humber Refinery, owned by rival oil company Phillips 66, and the railway line to Immingha ...

. In 1961, a new oil terminal was built by BP at Angle Bay in

Pembrokeshire Pembrokeshire ( ; cy, Sir Benfro ) is a Local government in Wales#Principal areas, county in the South West Wales, south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and the rest by sea. The count ...

. Llandarcy closed in 1998. The site was demolished in October 2009.

Operations

As initially constructed the refinery produced petrol, kerosene and fuel oils. By 1924 it produced a complete range of petroleum products including a wide range of lubricants, oil for special purposes, and paraffin wax. In 1926 experimental thermal cracking units were installed. The refining capacity of the refinery over its operational life is summarized in the table. In 1970 BP built a new £16m lubricating oil complex. This raised the production of lubricating oil to 100,000 tonnes a year. It comprised a 30,000 barrel per day vacuum distillation unit, a 9,000 barrel per day propane de-asphalting unit, a 10,000 bpd extraction unit, a 6,240 bpd dewaxing unit, and a 6,000 bpd ferro-finer. Half the capacity was decommissioned in late 1985, the remainder was closed in January 1986, together with the Angle Bay terminal and pipeline. The refinery was restructured as a specialist refinery until it was closed in 1999. The refinery was the focus of a significant petrochemical industry in the area: the

Baglan Bay Baglan Bay ''( Welsh: Bae Baglan)'' is a part of the Swansea Bay coastline and a district of Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales. Baglan Bay is also the name of a local government community. Baglan Bay is served by the M4 Motorway and the A ...

complex.

Import pipeline

Crude oil was originally imported through the purpose-built Queen’s Dock at Swansea, capable of handling tankers of up to 28,000 D.W.T. To accommodate larger tankers then being developed, a new jetty below Fort Popton and a new terminal was constructed at Angle Bay in Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire in 1962. The terminal could handle tankers of up to 100,000 D.W.T. (Dead Weight Tons). Crude oil was pumped from the jetties to five storage tanks built within the Fort and then to the tank farm at Kilpaison (51°40'29"N 5°02'47"W) on the south east edge of Angle Bay and then to Llandarcy through a new pipeline, from November 1960. The specification of the Angle Bay to Llandarcy refinery pipeline was as follows.

Location

The site of the refinery, which covered 650 acres, was off the

Llandarcy Llandarcy is a village near Neath in the Neath Port Talbot county borough, Wales, and was the site of the first oil refinery in the United Kingdom. It was originally designed as a garden village to house the workers for the BP refinery built b ...

Interchange (Junction 43) of the present-day M4, near the B4290 and

Skewen Skewen ( cy, Sgiwen) is a village within the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, in Wales. The village is served by Skewen railway station and has its own rugby club. History Skewen was once an industrial village. There were a number of colli ...

. The area is known as

Coedffranc Coedffranc is a village in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales. Today it has merged into an enlarged Skewen, occupying the central regions of the village of Skewen. Coedffranc is also a local government community. The community include ...

. To the south, off the

A483 The A483, officially described as the Swansea to Manchester Trunk Road, although now ending in Chester, is a major road in the United Kingdom. It runs from Swansea in Wales to Chester in England via Llandovery, Llandrindod Wells, Oswestry and W ...

, is

Crymlyn Burrows Crymlyn Burrows () is an area of land in Wales, UK to the east of Swansea city centre, and south of Crymlyn Bog. It is bounded by Jersey Marine Beach to the south and the River Neath to the east. The land west of Baldwin's Crescent falls with ...

References

External links