Some bad news today for the State, over 600 jobs gone in a area that needs them badly and we lose a reliable local fuel source.
That being said the Kwinana refinery was a rust bucket museum piece that BP had let run down and kept going by patching as cheaply as possible.
Sad news to hear. Only 60 jobs are to be retained when the joint re-opens next year sometime.
I went on a tour of the premises years ago and it was interesting to see it all.
Apparently upon re-opening it will simply be a fuel importing terminal.
My wife’s father came to WA in the 1960’s from the UK.He was sponsored by BP to work at that refinery. To my knowledge they recruited most of the workers for that plant the same way.
My Pop used to run the BP garage down in Kwinana, not the town centre but near the refinery in the 60’s. I think he retired in the early 70’s. Remember going down there with mum and the highlight was getting an ice cold small bottle of Coke from the fridge. Pop used to do it all himself, serve the customers, fill their tank, check their oil and water and he used to service cars, repair punctures, fit new tyres. It wasn’t far from the big flame that burnt constantly which was always fascinating to see.
We lived with my grandparents then and I remember after dinner him tipping all the money out on the dinner table and counting it. It was still the old Imperial system so he was counting pounds, pence and shillings.
Sad to see but they just can’t compete with the new bigger facilities in the region which probably has more efficient facilities and obviously the big one, cheaper labor costs. So that should mean cheaper fuel now right? Yeah right!!
My Dad worked @ the refinery during construction and stayed on until he retired in 78. He was an engineer who represented Thomlinson Steel during the consruction. I worked there in two occassions during the late 60’s and again from 75 to 94. During that period the refinery underwent several major revamps to modernise the plant the major one being the re instrumentation with was a $60m project to modernise the process control system and another to the Catalytic cracker (cat cracker). They also built a Hydrofliric plant to produce unleaded. The refinery was and is a unique plant because it can refine a wide range of crude which is uncommon in the refining business. The plant is not being shut because it is worn out or ancient it will be purely financial in that they don’t want to spend on capital works as has been the case since its inception. In 1985 it was very close to being mothballed but pressure from Aus Govt and a very good refinery manager in Selligman convinced London to invest.
Yep, terminal only, pull up pump into a tank, turn around and leave.
they will leave a huge amount of land left of defunct plant.