Caltex solidified its investment in South Africa with the construction of its oven refinery in Milnerton, Cape Town, in the mid 1960’s. The Caltex refinery remains one of the largest industrial undertakings in the Western Cape, providing much-needed jobs and economic growth in the area.

What is a Refinery?

A refinery is a large chemical plant, or “factory”. Just as a paper mill turns wood into paper or a sugar refinery turns sugar, a refinery takes a raw material –crude oil—and turns it into gasoline, diesel and other useful products.

A typical large refinery cost billions of rand to build and millions more to maintain and upgrade. It runs around the clock 365 days a year, employs between 1 000 and 2 000 people and occupies as much land as several hundred football fields.

These world-class operations had surprisingly humble origins. In 1876, company pioneers used wagons and mules to haul two primitive stills to a spot near Pico Canyon, Calif., the site of California’s first producing oil wells. The stills, each about the size of a garage, were used to heat oil at the rate of 25 to 40 barrels a day. This “oil boiling” produced kerosene, lubricants, waxes and gasoline—a clear, lightweight liquid that generally was discarded as a useless by-product.

Gasoline‘s lowly status rose quickly after 1892, when Charles Duryea built the first U.S. gas-powered automobile. From then on, the light stuff from crude oil became the right stuff.

Today, some refineries can turn more than half of every 159-litre barrel of crude oil into gasoline. That’s a remarkable technological improvement from 70 years ago, when only 41 litres of gasoline could be produced. How does this transformation take place? Essentially, refining breaks crude oil down into its various components, which then are selectively reconfigured into new products.

This process takes place inside a maze of pipes, boilers and other vessels that looks like a “metal spaghetti factory.” Employees regulate refinery operations from within highly automated control rooms. Because so much activity happens out of sight, refineries are surprisingly quiet places. The only sound most visitors hear is the constant, low hum of heavy equipment.

The complexity of this equipment varies from one refinery to the next. In general, the more sophisticated a refinery, the better its ability to upgrade crude oil into high-value products. Whether simple or complex, however, all refineries perform three basic functions: separation, conversion and treatment.