Bayway Refinery - History

History

In 1907 Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller acquired several hundred acres of the former Morse family estate between Linden and Elizabeth, New Jersey as the site for his latest refinery. Construction of temporary office buildings began on October 15, 1907 and work clearing the heavily wooded land began immediately. The cornerstone of the machine shop, the first permanent structure at the site, was laid on January 18, 1908, and construction continued throughout the year. The first crude stills at Bayway were completed in late 1908 and on January 2, 1909, they were symbolically fired up by William C. Koehler (c1880-1953). The facility began processing an initial 10,000 barrels (1,600 m3) of crude oil per day. Capacity was expanded to an estimated 17,176 barrels per day (2,730.8 m3/d) by 1911. Over the next several years the plant continued expanding and increasing capacity and workforce.

In 1911, Standard Oil was broken up into smaller units in accordance the Sherman Antitrust Act. One of these successor companies was Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, the precursor to Esso and later Exxon, which retained the ownership of the Bayway facilities.

Bayway became a leading research facility within the S.O. New Jersey enterprise. It was the first facility in the United States to employ the use of hydrogenation process to get greater yields from its crude products, and in 1919 scientists at Bayway created the world's first petrochemical: isopropyl alcohol.

The Ethyl Corporation, a joint venture of General Motors and Standard Oil, built a plant for the manufacture of tetraethyl lead (TEL, the "lead" in leaded gasoline) at the refinery over the course of three months in 1924. Within the first two months of its operation, the facility had seventeen cases of severe lead poisoning leading to hallucinations and insanity, and then five deaths in quick succession. The plant was shut down by the state of New Jersey in October, and Standard Oil was forbidden to manufacture TEL there again without state permission.

In the years leading up to World War II, the plant was upgraded and optimized to secure the defense of the country. On December 12, 1941, in response to the formation of the Axis powers, Bayway went dark, in a blackout instituted to protect the facility from enemy attack; it would last until the end of the war. During World War II, the plant constructed its first catalytic cracker, or "cat cracker", which went into operation on January 18, 1943. This development proved essential to the production of fuel to support the Allied war effort, especially high-octane aviation fuel, and also allowed the production of synthetic butyl rubber and materials used to manufacture explosives.

After the war, the use of coal for heating declined sharply in the United States. In 1947, Esso invested $26 million in a refinery expansion program to meet an increased post-war demand for gasoline and heating oil, and constructed a second, much larger catalytic cracker with an initial processing capacity of 49,000 bbl/d (7,800 m3/d), replacing the original 1943 unit. The "Cat" came online in October 1949 and was the largest in the world during the twentieth century, and as of 2008 was the largest in the western hemisphere.

In 1965 Enjay Chemical, a subsidiary of the Esso Chemical Company (which later became Exxon Chemical) in the Standard Oil Company New Jersey (known publicly mostly by the Esso, Enco and Humble brands) assumed all of the chemical processing assets and products at Bayway. In 1973, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey was renamed Exxon, and the facility likewise became known as the Exxon Bayway Refinery.

On the night of December 5, 1970 a series of powerful explosions occurred at the refinery, resulting in multiple injuries but no fatalities in and around the plant. Windows were shattered as far away as Staten Island, and the explosion was felt more than thirty miles away.

1976 brought about the installation of the most iconic structure at the refinery, the Wet Gas Scrubber. Visible from the New Jersey Turnpike with its giant plumes of water vapor, this device eliminates 7-8 tons of dust per day as well as gases generated from the catalytic cracking process. To this day it is recognized as one of the most efficient and effective units of its kind in the world.

On the night of January 1–2, 1990, a cracked underwater pipeline leaked about 567,000 US gallons (2,150 m3) of fuel oil into the Arthur Kill. Because the waterway was already so heavily industrialized, Exxon argued that it should not have to pay any damages. The court disagreed, ordering the company to pay $15 million in reparations.

On April 8, 1993, the Tosco Corporation finalized proceedings to purchase the refinery from Exxon for a sum of $175 million, although the Exxon Chemical Company continued to run the Chemical Plant. During this time Bayway was operated by Bayway Refining Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tosco Corporation. Under the direction of Tosco, Bayway was able to reorganize and upgrade the facility, and years of operating at a loss for Exxon in the later 1980s were turned around swiftly.

The Morristown and Erie Railway became the contract switcher for the refinery in 1995, and set up the Bayshore Terminal Company to handle the management of 8,000 railroad cars full of various refinery products each year. Since 2007, the EMD SW1500 diesel locomotive has been assigned to the plant.

In 1999, the Infineum company (a joint project of Exxon Chemical, Shell International Chemicals and Shell Chemical) took over operation of the chemical plant. Infineum researches and produces crankcase lubricant additives, fuel additives, and specialty lubricant additives, as well as automatic transmission fluids, gear oils, and industrial oils.

Tosco was bought in 2001 by Phillips Petroleum, which merged with Conoco to form ConocoPhillips in 2002 and later spun-off downstream, midstream and chemical assets into a new Phillips 66 company in 2012.

In 2003 a new polypropylene facility went online that produces 775 million pounds per year.