Crude oil: the building block

All of the refinery products start their journey as crude oil thousands of metres underground. Crude oil began forming millions of years ago as plant and animal remains decayed in sediments at the bottoms of oceans, lakes and streams. Massive pressures and high temperatures converted this organic matter into oil and gas. In rare circumstances, rock formations trapped large accumulations of crude oil that can be extracted in commercial amounts.

Crude oil is essentially a combination of two elements - hydrogen and carbon. The atoms of these two elements combine in many ways to form thousands of molecules called hydrocarbons. Crude oil varies from oilfield to oilfield and can range in colour and composition from light yellow, like olive oil, to thick black, like treacle.

Although no two crude oils are exactly the same, modern refining and petrochemical technology is capable of transforming most crudes into literally hundreds of common useful products, including fuels, plastics, waxes and lubricants.

The Altona refinery processes a range of foreign and domestic crude oils. The refinery receives approximately half its crude oil from Bass Strait, delivered direct to the refinery via pipeline. The remainder of the refinery's crude oil mainly comes from South East Asia, delivered by large tankers to the Point Gellibrand dock at Williamstown.

A diverse range of products
Most people think only of petrol when they think of oil refineries but, in fact, refinery products are used in an incredibly diverse range of everyday products. For example, they are used in the manufacture of detergents, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fabrics, dyes, paints, adhesives and synthetic rubber. They are also used to produce fertilisers, insecticides and herbicides for agriculture. A wide range of plastics are also manufactured from petroleum products and because plastics can be readily transformed they can be used in an almost unlimited number of ways.