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water use fact sheets
Water conservation
While water use is essential to the production and processing of crude oil, we are improving water management practices across all our facilities.
Water conservation teams across all our sites have been highly effective in reducing our water consumption in Australia by about 1000 megalitres (ML) per year - equivalent to 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Altona Refinery
Altona Refinery is ExxonMobil's largest consumer of water in Australia. The refinery currently consumes about 5 ML of fresh water per day. This is a reduction compared with previous years, which had consumption rates close to 6 ML and reflects the success so far of programs to reduce consumption.
Initiatives to reduce water consumption have included:
- Turning off one of the large turbine-driven pumps in the Residual Flash Down (RFD) tower which was running on standby, saving around 9 ML of water a year.
- Reducing frequency of routine safety showers testing by 75 percent while maintaining our high safety standards, resulting in estimated savings of 3 ML a year.
- An ongoing steam trap replacement program while continuing to pro-actively identify and repair steam leaks - these two projects together are saving around 100,000 litres of water a day.
The refinery has also significantly improved the quality of its discharge to the trade waste sewer to assist with greater waste water reuse from the Werribee treatment facility.
Long Island Point
Long Island Point has halved its water use since 2006 through the implementation of water-saving projects, resulting in savings of over 100 ML of water per annum. In early 2007 the plant switched from a manual to an automated flare suppression system. The new automatic system more accurately synchronises the amount of water used with the volume of gas combusted at the flare tip. This saves an estimated 55 ML of water per year - or the equivalent of almost two million three-minute showers.
Other initiatives include:
- Review and reduction of the deluge system testing frequency, in line with industry standards, saving an estimated 3.5 ML of water annually.
- Hydro-testing ballast tanks using site-treated water, saving 11 ML of water per tank.
Other initiatives being implemented include air compressor upgrades, which will save around 1 ML water annually and installation of water tanks on the administration and laboratory buildings.
Yarraville Terminal
A unique partnership between the Mobil Yarraville Terminal, Veolia Environmental Services (VES), with the assistance of a grant from City West Water, is saving around 20,000 litres of water a day.
The arrangement between Mobil and Veolia, a waste management and resource recovery company, involves trucking high quality waste water from the Yarraville Terminal to the VES industrial waste liquid treatment facility at Brooklyn. The water is used in cleaning the plants filter press, a task previously done using fresh water from the mains.
