Fuelling Victoria for 60 years

2009 marked the 60^th anniversary of Mobil’s refinery in Altona – 60 years of fuelling Victoria.

The crude oil processed through the refinery is turned into an amazing array of products that each of us use every day – petrol and diesel in the cars we drive, jet fuel in the airliners we travel around the world in, bitumen for the roads we drive on.

The Altona Refinery now supplies around half of Victoria’s fuel needs, but it wasn’t always so.

From humble beginnings…

The refinery had its humble beginnings as a lubricating oils and bitumen plant, with a capacity of around 2,200 barrels of crude a day. Construction began on the original refinery in 1946 by a joint venture between the Vacuum Oil Company (later Mobil) and Standard Oil (later Exxon / Esso). When it was built, the refinery nestled on land that was little more than a few empty paddocks far from the bustle of the CBD.

First production at the refinery was in the middle of 1949, but it wasn’t long before expansion was required to meet the increasing post-World War II demand for petroleum products.

Victoria needs more fuel!

Construction began in 1953, and increased the refinery’s output twelvefold, with the refinery able to produce almost 3.5 million litres a day. The centrepiece of the expansion was the introduction of the “Cat Cracker” – the Thermofor Catalytic Cracking unit (TCC) that rose 81 metres, twice as high as any office building in Melbourne or Sydney at the time.

The entire project involved 2,200 workers, cost 20 million pounds and took 22 months to complete. It enabled the refinery to extend its product range into motor vehicle fuels, as well as to refine the crude oil that had recently been discovered in New Guinea.

Prior to the expansion of Altona, the bill for petroleum imports accounted for some 12 percent of the cost of all of Australia’s imports. The expansion of the refinery – along with developments in other Australian refineries – allowed the country to move closer to self-sufficiency on petroleum products.

The expansion also saw the concept of collective bargaining first used at the refinery, an approach which was quite revolutionary in the Australian labour movement at the time.

The refinery was officially opened at a grand function at which the guest of honour was the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies. More than 1,000 guests crowded into the workshop to listen to the speakers before touring the refinery and enjoying a wonderful feast. The Prime Minister pointed out that the 20 million pound investment in the refinery was the same size as the total annual federal budget before the war.

Altona was the first refinery in Australia to produce aviation fuel, and further expansion occurred in the late 1960s / 1970s, to allow the refinery to process crude oil from the newly developed Bass Strait fields.

What a cracker!

In the past two decades, the refinery has undergone further development. In 1997, hundreds of people lined streets in the western suburbs to witness a 50-metre-long, 850-tonne converter roll into town. The converter was the main piece of equipment for the refinery’s new Fluidised Catalytic Cracker (FCC), and the transport task involved temporarily dismantling overhead powerlines and street signs to enable the converter to be delivered from Williamstown Dock to the refinery. It was part of a major long-term investment program to upgrade and modernise the refinery.

In 2004, the refinery invested in the Clean Fuels Venture, to meet new fuels specifications introduced by the Federal Government. At the same time, Altona embarked on its New Business Model which made significant changes to the way the refinery was run so as to improve its longer term viability.

A significant part of our economy

The refinery has seen substantial changes in the scale and scope of its operations over the years, but remains one of Victoria’s most reliable and important industrial facilities. When a refinery in Altona was first announced in the 1940s, there was a great amount of anticipation and the project was seen as significant for the economy. The refinery remains an important part of the economy, directly providing hundreds of jobs for Victorians and indirectly supporting thousands of additional jobs in the community, while contributing millions of dollars each year in taxes and rates to government, and grants to local community groups.