Originally Posted By: B320i
Australia no longer has the capacity to supply its own fuel; our last refinery closed a few years ago now, and all the fuel supposedly comes from the same refinery in Singapore tehse days.
BP says they're still operating the Kwinana Refinery in Western Australia. It sounds like the last refinery left. I realize it's a long way to the population centers on the other side of the country, but a pipeline might still be cheaper than transporting it by tanker.
Quote:
http://www.bp.com/en_au/australia/about-us/what-we-do/refining.html
Petrol sold in Australia is either refined from crude oil in Australian refineries or imported as a finished product from overseas.
We refine crude oil at the Kwinana Refinery in Western Australia. Crude oil is shipped from locations including, the Middle East, West Africa, New Zealand, Indonesia and north-west Australia.
In 2012 – 13, Australian refineries supplied around 63 per cent of total Australian demand for petroleum products. The remaining 37 per cent of demand was met by imports. These imported products were sourced from over 20 countries, mainly from Asia.
That information may be outdated, since Chevron closed down a refinery in 2014.....
Quote:
https://www.caltex.com.au/our-company/environment/kurnell-site-conversion
In July 2012, Caltex announced a restructure of our supply chain including the conversion of Kurnell refinery to a major import terminal.
With this decision, Caltex commenced a major project to transform the Kurnell site to operate as a terminal, including work inside the refinery as well as at our Kurnell wharf and sub berth.
On schedule in October 2014, the Kurnell refinery was safely shut down and terminal operations commenced on site.
I suppose you've probably got a completely different situation than we have. At least here, most of the big retail fuel names are attached to a parent company that actually refines oil in this country. And in my state there are strict standards that a state agency can spot check at the refinery, terminal, or retail pump. However, the practical nature of fungible fuel means that there's no incentive to make the base fuel better or worse. Someone is going to find out, whether it's a competitor, the pipeline operator (which has a transportation system that's more like banking than transportation), or government agencies.