A HUGE OIL REFINERY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4496, 27 November 1922, Page 1

A HUGE OIL REFINERY.

NEAR A BRITISH PORT. J During the last three years .a British oil company has been occupied in completing one of. the largest oil refineries in the world. This refinery occupies a site of about' 650 acres near a British port, and it has involved the expenditure of about three million pounds.. Frpm the jetties' where the tank steamers are unloaded ■pipe -lines, are laid to eight tanks, which, are ca-pable of bolding tpn thousand tons of oil. Electricallydriven pumps are used to convey the oil from these tanks to storage tanks situated at. the refinery, about four miles away. The storage tanks, have . a total capacity of nearly twenty-one million gallons . With this up-to-date equipment a ten thousand ton oil tanker can be unloaded in about -twelve hours, and can be reloaded with refined oil in twenty hours. .In fact, oil-arriving at the dock one day* can be returned as refined, oil on the third day. When work' was Jjegun the refinery proved itself >*tj>able of I dealing wtih fifteen million gallons of I oil per month ; but in course of time , this figure will be greatly increased.. -This is the first occasion on which ! an attempt has been made upon a commercial basis to refine crude oil several -.thousand miles away from the soure’e of> production.