Petroleum products, Oil, Petrol, LPG and Petrochemicals
Oil has been a regular cargo on the railways since the mid nineteenth century, initially transported in wooden barrels later and (by the time of the First World War) in rolled steel drums. Tank wagons were introduced in limited number from the mod 19th century, however these could only operate between locations equipped to handle bulk oil, so were not terribly common until the 1920s.
As it comes out of the ground oil is made up of a range of materials ranging from heavy tar to oils so light they will evaporate, this raw mix is of limited practical use. In a refinery the various grades of oil are separated, each being used for particular purposes.
A full blown oil refinery is a large installation characterised by storage tanks, tall metal towers, cooling towers and a lot of pipe-work. The advantage for the modeller is the range of rolling stock which would be required to handle the various petrochemicals produced.
The tall towers are where the refining takes place. The crude oil is first heated and fed into a 'fractionating column', basically a large condenser in which the different grades are condensed out at different levels, the heavier bituminous tars and oils at the bottom, and progressively lighter more volatile products; paraffin wax, lubricating oil, gas oil, and motor and aviation spirit (petrol) towards the top.
Fig ___ Fractionating column
As the demand for the lighter spirits is high the heavy oils are further refined in 'cracking towers', where a heat treatment breaks down the liquid, pressurised to raise its boiling point, into a series of lighter products. The cracking process was originally developed in the later 19th century (in America and Russia) but the modern methodology was developed in the early 1930's by an American called Eugene Houndry (1892-1962) and arrived in Britain shortly thereafter. At the time the industry was carrying the bulk of the oil as low value 'crude', refining it in the UK and selling the high value products.
Fig ___ Cracking Tower
The products of the various distillations are not useable without treatment, the distillates are commonly treated with sulphuric acid and caustic soda, when there is a lot of sulphur in the oil cupric oxide ('litharge') is employed as a desulphurizing agent.
Also produced at the refineries are the Liquid Petroleum Gasses (LPG), such as Butane, Propane and Ammonia. These are liquefied (usually by refrigeration) and shipped out in pressurised tank wagons. Rail tanker LPG traffic only started in the later 1960's, prior to that date limited quantities were shipped in smaller pressure canisters and cylinders in standard railway wagons. LPG is discussed in more detail below.
British on-shore and off-shore oil fields
There are only limited deposits of oil found in the UK at East Nottinghamshire and in north Leicestershire, with a post war field at Wytch Farm Dorset. Oil shale is a kind of rock which contains an oily liquid called kerogen which can be distilled to produce petroleum. If you heat oil shale to about 500 degrees Celsius you get hydrocarbons and a range of solid products most of which are useless but some are valuable, notably sulphur, ammonia, alumina, soda ash and nahcolite (which is used in industrial exhaust gas scrubbing). Oil shale was regularly used from about the sixteenth century but this was mainly seen as a medicinal material. In the seventeenth century an Italian town was heated using gas made from oil shale but serious commercial exploitation only began in 1838 in France where the oil was distilled for lamp oil. Most people used whale oil for domestic lighting but by the mid nineteenth century whale oil could not meet the demand for lamp oil and prices rose. Around this time various shale oil recovery firms were established. You may see references to 'tar tunnels', these were usually coal mines which encountered a layer of oil shale the liquid in which then leaked out and could be processed. The Ironbridge Gorge Museum complex in Shropshire includes a tar tunnel of this type.
James Young (1811-1883) was the originator of the British paraffin industry. In the later 1840's he was engaged in the manufacture of oils from a petroleum spring at Alfreton, Derbyshire, and in 1850 set up a partnership to manufacture oils from `Torbane Hill mineral', or `Boghead coal', at Bathgate. He began selling paraffin in 1856 and had a great deal of success with the product (which used in lamps did not smell nearly as badly as the currently available fish oils). Young bought out his partners and sold the enterprise (`Young's Paraffin Light and Mineral Oil Company') in 1866.
An American called Drake discovered Pensylvanian crude oil in 1859 and the business expanded rapidly but as with most oils in the Western hemisphere the proportion of lighter fractions (kerrosene, petrol, naphtha and diesel oils) was small. Oils from the Eastern hemisphere contain a higher proportion of the valuable light ingredients but less sulphur and thick residues such as asphalt and coke (which often contain metals). The heavy western oils need more energy input to break them down, typically to get two barrels of goodies from heavy oil you use one barrel of the oil as fuel. A light oil well produces about 10,000 barrels per day, heavy oil wells only deliver 5-100 barrels a day. As result there were expeditions to various parts of the world and in the Middle East large deposits were found. The British had a considerable influence in that part of the world and by the early 20th century the UK was importing oil from this area in purpose built tanker ships. One of the reasons for tension between Britain and France and the Germans in the run up to World War One was the shift to oil fired warships, the Germans had no domestic oil production and were actually going to build a railway line from Berlin down to Basra in Iraq to bring oil for their fleet. The first (and one of the largest) deployment of British troops in World War One was in fact to Basra to secure the Iraqi oil fields.
Most shale oil works failed at the end of the nineteenth century as comparatively cheap US and Middle Eastern oil came in to the UK but where the shale contained more than about five percent oil by volume recovery remained an economic proposition. Processing of shale oil involves mining, crushing and retorting, but the work is labour intensive. Processing of shale oil world wide peaked shortly after the Second World War but the rising cost of labour told against the industry. In the oil business oil from shale and tar sands is called syncrude. Shale oil was commercially refined in the Lothian area of Scotland (to the West of Edinburgh) from the 1860's until the 1960's and, on a smaller scale, in north Somerset near Watchet. The Scottish shale oil works used the Pumpherston process which employs external heating of the retort. For a time in the early nineteenth century Britain was an oil exporting country but this did not last long and the vast majority of the UK's oil was imported prior to the North Sea oil boom of the late 1970's. A 2005 estimate set the total world resources of oil shale at 411 gigatons — enough to yield 2.8 to 3.3 trillion barrels (520 km3) of shale oil. This exceeds the world's proven conventional oil reserves, estimated at 1.317 trillion barrels (209.4×10^9 m3), as of 1 January 2007. The United States, Russia and Brazil account for 86% of the world's resources in terms of shale-oil content with the US holding just over 60 percent.
Oil Refineries and Storage/Distribution Depots
Oil has been imported in bulk since the 1880's but up to the 1920's most internal movement was still in wooden barrels. Tank wagons with tubular barrels resembling the Peco ten foot wheelbase model appeared on the railways in the 1880's but there were few routes with facilities to handle bulk liquids at both ends. Horse drawn tank wagons appeared at about the same time but these do not seem to have been very common. In the later 1920's oil tank railway wagons began to appear in greater numbers as recipients developed rail links and installed bulk storage tanks and by the mid 1930's the wooden barrels had largely been displaced.
Petroleum oil processing developed after the advent of the railways and has featured large establishments equipped with storage tanks of various kinds since at least the early twentieth century. Early oil storage tanks were (typically) 90 feet (30m) in diameter and 30 feet (10m) tall, they had a low conical top (usually wood covered with metal plates). By the later 1930s domed tops made of welded steel were widely seen, these had replaced the older conical topped tanks by the 1960s. On an N Gauge layout a tank farm of several seven inch (18cm) diameter tanks requires a prodigious amount of room, however you can get down to tanks of only four inches (100mm) diameter and just under two inches (50mm) in height and they still (just about) look big enough to be acceptable.
Due to the obvious danger of fire, and to save money on the purchase of land, oil depots were usually located outside built-up areas and tended to grow rather haphazardly as consumption for fuel and chemical industry feed-stock increased.
Because most oil is imported most oil refineries and associated petro-chemical establishments are located on large river estuaries. Generally they prefer flat land and they tend to need a lot of water for cooling purposes. Inland depots tended to be somewhat smaller but that is a relative term and they were still on the big side for inclusion on a model railway.
Fig ___ Major rail connected oil installations
Fortunately railway access to any oil installation is usually restricted to a small corner of the refinery and locomotives are not allowed to enter the loading or unloading area. The loading area will usually feature several quite long sidings to accommodate the rolling stock, and such a loading point could form part of a layout with most of the 'depot' or 'refinery' painted on the back-scene.
It has long been standard practice to have a fairly long wheelbase wagon on hand, known as a 'reach wagon' which can be coupled between the loco and the rail tanker wagons so that the loco does not have to get too far into a dangerous installation when shunting tanks. Old plate wagons (the Peco long wheelbase 'plate' wagon) are often used as 'reach' wagons, kept at the terminal these often have their sides removed and laid on the floor. In the early 1980's redundant ferry wagons similar to the Peco long wheelbase 'tarpaulin' wagons were also used as reach wagons. If a long wagon was not available a pair of standard five plank open wagons was used, a single ten foot wheelbase wagon would not be long enough.
If you want a refinery as such the Continental kit manufacturers produce at least one kit of a tower which may be used to represent the refinery. The Vicks Inhaler available from your local chemist has a dome ended cover which would serve for a cracking tower, just add some pipework, a couple of platforms and some ladders. The tower would be silver stained with black, the ladders and platforms would normally be painted white.
Storage tanks in a refinery are always surrounded by a low wall or earth embankment, perhaps five foot high, to act as a containment should the tank leak, technically termed a 'bund wall' the enclosed space has to be sufficient to contain a completely drained tank full, which in practice means as much space around the tank as is contained in the upper part of the tank (above the height of the wall). The pipes emerging from the tank pass over the top of this wall or bank, they do not as a rule pass through it. There are several kits of storage tanks for both liquids and gasses available. Kibri offer what I believe is the best storage tank (B-7466 is in Esso livery, B-7462 is in Aral livery), consisting of a pair of tanks complete with a low surrounding wall and a set of pipework and control valves feeding into 'buried pipes'. Also from Kibri is a set of four small horizontal tanks and a small vertical tank ((B-7456). Faller offer a spherical tank of the kind used for holding pressurised gasses (kit number 2130) and they also offer a pair of rather small tanks, however I would suggest replacing the rather heavy handrails on the latter with Plastruct Fineline mouldings. The tops from aerosol canisters can be used to good effect to represent smaller storage tanks. Roads in the refinery area are also commonly raised on an earth bank so they will not be covered by a spill.
Fig ___ Tanks and towers
Another feature of a refinery (as opposed to a storage depot) would be a few tall chimneys. The process produces a series of unpleasant gasses which are passed up the chimney and often 'flared' (deliberately set on fire) at the top. The chimneys should be at least six inches tall in N and will not be the standard brick affairs associated with mills but are more likely to be silver metal with an external framework (these often have multiple pipes running up them) or a concrete tube with perhaps three metal pipes sticking out at the top.
The metal type can be made using any suitable tubing, the framework can be represented using microstrip with angled side supports from three or four Heljan 'lighting masts', suitably sanded down to give a thinner look. The side supports should extend a minimum of about two thirds of the way up the tube.
The concrete type is typically eight foot (2.5m) in diameter and white but usually the top twenty foot or so is painted black, as are the pipes sticking out of the top. The chimneys used are usually straight sided with no taper, you could use Plastruct tubing but pens with a suitably shaped body about ten to fifteen millimetres in diameter would do just as well.
One point to remember is that bottom discharge of Class A (very flammable) liquids such as petrol was banned at the turn of the century, following leaks onto the track. Class A tankers were loaded and discharged through the top using hoses and at even a small terminal there would be a raised walk-way to give access to the tank tops. This would be equipped with swinging arms from which dangled the black rubber loading or discharge pipes for the wagons.
Fig ___ Petrol cranes
This requirement for top loading and discharge of Class A liquids was dispensed with the 1960's but some of the terminals equipped for this kind of handling remained in place into the early 1970's.
Where a permanent walk-way was not justified a light frame mounted on small wheels would be provided. This frame carried a swinging arm or gallows arranged to be higher than the rail tanker top hatch, and from this would trail the black rubber two inch discharge hose. Very similar implements were regularly used for loading Bitumen wagons at the refineries into the 1970's and possibly the 1980's. Making one of these would be rather more difficult in N as they were rather light and flimsy in appearance. The best bet would be to make the whole thing from wire and extend the vertical post down into the baseboard for support as shown in the drawing below.
Fig ___ Top loading apparatus used for Bitumen
Fig ___ Suggestion for a refinery on a layout
A simple storage or distribution depot is an attractive option for a layout, it might be located anywhere in the country and would consist of tanks and rail and possibly road tanker facilities. The storage tanks might be some distance from the loading/unloading point and this would not be on a siding close to the main line where sparks from steam locos would be a hazard. A spur to an oil or petrol terminal can therefore be used to fill in an awkward corner of a layout. There are kits of oil storage tanks available in Continental ranges if you have room for them but they can be assumed to be some distance away.
A modern oil depot can be a very compact affair, these days the top discharge for Class A liquids is no longer required, flexible hoses leading to simple hydrant type connections are used. Generally at larger terminals there are two tracks, one to each side of the hydrants, however smaller terminals can have only a single track.
The hydrants feed into pipes which are sometimes buried under the ground, in which case the pipework usually comes to the surface close by and thereafter most pipes are above ground, supported on simple steel bench work and usually a light grey colour. At many installations there is a single large (6-10 inch (15-25cm) diameter) pipe running alongside the siding. The flexible hoses are dark grey (silver for LPG) and about four inches (10cm) diameter with a light grey coupling on the ends, the hoses are normally left attached to the valves and at modern installations there is sometimes a hooped support to carry the hose when not in use. The example illustrated below is typical, the hydrant at the front has a problem, hence no hose and a red warning label attached to it. The track is laid on bare concrete and sits in a shallow trench to contain any spillage, the hydrant and pipe are on a raised concrete platform and the area to the right is gravel.
Fig ___ Fuel oil terminal
Coloured bands are sometimes seen on pipes, to help the terminal workers to trace out the line. Loading valves are often painted black, red or green but the oil products break up most paints so near the hydrant connections the paint gets patchy with black areas showing through. The loading or unloading area would have a raised bank of earth round it and the gate into the area might have a rubber seal along the bottom.
Fig ___ Class B oil loading/discharging
One standard feature of any oil or gas handling installation since the 1960's would be fire monitors (a small depot might have only one). These are metal 'cannon' like objects that squirt out foam in case of a fire, they are always painted red. They can be fixed or mounted on a mobile trolley, for modelling purposes the fixed type are much easier to make.
In addition where volatile chemicals are involved (LPG, Ammonia and the like) there are usually 'Spray Rails' mounted above the tracks, these are two inch diameter pipes fitted with spray nozzles on the under side. In the event of a fire these generate a water mist over the rake of wagons, which is the best way to prevent the fire spreading and also stops the heat of the flames reaching nearby tanks etc. Normally there are two rails above each track, so that each side of every wagon will be covered, they are supported about every ten to fifteen feet by a light metal arm. Often there are two sets of arms, each one supporting one of the spray rails.
Not all depots were so complicated however, oil fired central heating appeared in the 1930's and was popular from the 1940's until the big oil price rises in the 1970's. Heating oils are Class B liquids, which do not require the top loading/discharging arrangement. Coal merchants often had a yard adjoining the railway goods yard at the local station and these firms often branched out into supplying domestic heating oil. These yard based facilities are discussed in the section on Railway Company Goods Facilities - Coal and Heating Oil. The tanks
would be quite large, in N a 'till roll' with plastic card ends would serve for
a horizontal tank. Add an
access hatch from a disc of 40 thou card at one end and a bit of wire bent over
at the top as a 'breather pipe' at the other. Alternatively the tank body from an American oil tank wagon can be used. It would be normal to enclose the
tank in a brick wall so that if it leaked the spill would be contained. In
addition there will be a small building housing the pump (used to transfer the
oil from the rail tanks to the storage tanks and also to load delivery
lorries).
Larger heating oil terminals had large storage tanks but often had smaller tanks acting as buffer stored for loading the lorries. The sketch below assumes you have used the tops from aerosol cans for the storage tanks and Ratio oil tanks for the buffer stores (raised on tall brick supporting walls so they drain into the lorries by gravity). The loading point consists of cranes supported on the H section girders supporting the corrugated iron pitched roof. The general arrangement is very loosely based on a rather larger heating oil terminal operated in the 1960's by Charringtons, a major London fuel merchant. The layout as shown is about the minimum for such a depot, the prototype had two rail tracks, several large storage tanks, a number of lorry loading points each with a smaller buffer tank or two close by and several odd buildings including a canteen or mess for the lorry crews and terminal staff.
Fig ___ Rail Connected Heating Oil Merchants
The tanks at a larger depot do not need to be modelled unless you have the room, they were often be buried in the ground close by but small tanks from the various kit manufacturers would serve and simple tanks made from snap-on aerosol canister caps would do.
Oil from Coal
With the problems caused by two World Wars there was on-going interest in producing motor fuels from coal, of which the UK had plentiful supplies. The photo below shows a coal to oil plant built by ICI at Billingham in the 1930s to manufacture Benzole (used as petrol or as a petrol additive). This plant is nicely compact and allows regular visits by coal wagons and tank wagons, both sharing a common siding if space is tight (note the coal wagons can remain at the end of the siding whilst tankers are filled closer to the entrance).
Fig ___ Model of the ICI oil plant at Billingham
Benzole was a popular fuel and larger gas works often incorporated a benzole plant to recover this and other products from the distillation of coal tar. There is an illustration of a benzole plant in the section Lineside Industries - Gas Works.
Two companies marketed benzole based motor fuel, National Benzole Co. Ltd. (a sunsidiary of Shell-Mex and BP's joint UK operation) and Cleveland Petroleum Co. Ltd (a subsidiary of Esso, although they maintained a separate fleet of tankers). Tanks wagons for any of these companies might therefore be seen at such a plant.
Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG)
LPG's include propane, butane and various more exotic gasses. The first two are routinely used for heating but propane cannot be used indoors as the products of combustion are poisonous. One slight problem is that butane is a liquid at below about XXX degrees Celsius, so it is no use as a fuel in cold climates. LPG was produced in Britain by the Riverside Oil Co around the turn of the century although there was little interest in it at the time. In America however things moved rather more quickly and by the time of the First World War the Americans were using butane for domestic heating and cooking. The idea was taken up by the French and in about 1935 the Modern Gas and Equipment Company was set up in Britain to sell imported French 'Calor Gas'.
Customs officers felt that butane was a rather dangerous material to be shipped across the channel so supplies were purchased from Shell Mex and BP, both of whom viewed it as a waste product at the time. As no British firm had ever made gas cylinders the Home Office and ICI (who were making petrol from coal at Billingham with butane as a by-product) devised a British specification.
In 1936 dealerships were established to sell cylinders of calor gas, each dealer was given an eight horsepower Fordson van, and supplies were delivered in cylinders by rail.
Fig ___ Calor Gas Dealers Van
Eventually the dealers set up larger storage and bottling plants and these were supplied by rail tank wagons either running onto private sidings or decanting into road wagons (this was NOT done at normal goods yards).
If your layout is based in the 1960's or later you might consider a simple transshipment point for LPG to feed road tankers (the first LPG tanks, similar to the Peco offering, appeared in 1962, see also 'Livery - Tank Wagons'). Facilities at a remote LPG depot can be quite small, perhaps only taking two, three or four of the Peco fifteen foot wheelbase tank wagons, a 'reach wagon' would be stored at the terminal used so the loco would not enter the loading area. Four Peco tanks occupy the same length as two Farish tank wagons (these latter have to be converted to LPG tankers, introduced in 967, see also 'Goods Rolling Stock Design - Rail Tanks').
There will be a concrete area with rails inset into it surrounded by a low wall to contain spillages, there should be a low gate to close off the entrance to this area and fitted with a sealing rubber strip along the bottom edge.
Small hydrants will be located alongside the track for coupling up the discharge pipes. If it is a busy terminal there might be some hoses left connected to the hydrants, these are grey or natural metal steel reinforced flexible hoses about a foot thick, the coiled metal guitar string 'D' is about right for this. These metal flexible hoses, called Anaconda Hoses, are expensive and most of the pipe-work would be solid metal tubing, either buried or carried above the ground on a steel framework.
The wagons might discharge only into road tankers, the lorry loading point would normally be a couple of hundred yards from the railway siding. The loading point will have a metal framework to support a set of water-spray pipes in case of a fire.
There was an article on such a small LPG terminal in Model Railway Constructor magazine, unfortunately I cannot confirm the date but I believe it was in the early 1980's. The rail tankers are available in 'N' from the Peco range and bogie LPG tankers can be produced from the Grafar 100 ton bogie tanker.
xxx confirm date of article if possible
Fig ___ LPG Loading/Discharging point
Synthetic Oil
Developed by German scientists in the 1930s and 1940s synthetic oil, based on manufactured polyalphaolefins and other materials, was developed. This allowed Germany to produce both fuel and lubricants when it had only limited access to the oil fields. One side effect was that they found these oils were less liable to freeze during the Russian winter (petroleum oils contain waxes which do freeze at low temperatures). Synthetic oil fell from favour after World War Two as suplies of cheap oil became plentiful, however countries with limited access to the cheap oil developed the process further (even today a lot of the diesel in South Africa is made from synthetic oils). As a component for lubricating oils however the sythetics remained of considerable interest (based on the Germans experience in the Russian winters). Modern synthetic lubrication oils are widely considered preferable to mineral oils. It is estimated that we have now consumed about a third of the available petroleum oil and hence in the future synthetic oils will become increasingly important.
The British have only ever developed small synthetic oil plants, many based in oil refineries, and I was not able to find any illustrations of a British synthetic fuel plant other than the ICI plant at Billingham (discussed under 'Oil from Coal' above).
Oil Companies
It is impractical to cover the details of all companies manufacturing or trading in oil and coal tar products, a good start for anyone interested in these areas is Mr. R. Tourret's book 'Petroleum tank wagons of Britain' (see bibliography for details). Most of those listed below have at some point operated tank wagons several of which have been seen in model form.
For oil company logos see also Appendix One - Garages and Petrol Stations.
For details on Lubrication Oil companies see Lineside Industries - Lubricating Oils and Associated Works.
The UK oil industry was moderately stable until the 1960s, the listigs below are divided into companies that operated in the UK before 1960 and those that appeared after that date.
Pre 1960s Brands
Carless was one of the first UK oil companies, formed in 1859 by Eugene Carless. Carless became the leading distillery in Britain for the newly imported American crude oil, and made advances in refining coal tar and shales, from which were derived benzoline, paraffin oil, burning naphtha and carburine. In 1872 a partnership with George Bligh Capel and John Hare Leonard brought a name change with the company trading as Carless, Capel and Leonard. Leonard became the sole proprietor within eighteen months. Following a merger with a nearby chemical firm run by a Frederick Simms (who was associated with Gottlieb Daimler) Simms suggested the trade name of Petrol, to be used for a motor launch spirit in 1893, and this was accepted by William Leonard. It was not however accepted for registration as a trade mark as it was regarded by the Registrar as a descriptive word. Marketing petrol firmly linked the firm with the motor car and Carless Capel and Leonard supplied their new fuel for the Emancipation Run to Brighton in 1896. Simms and Leonard were both founder members of the Automobile Club, later the R.A.C. At the turn of the century Carless Petrol was still virtually the only British source of highly refined motor spirit, and by 1906 the firm had 1,500 agents throughout the country. The company developed the Coalite solid fuel in the 1920s and made TNT during the 39-45 war. The Company opened a new refinery at Harwich in 1964 taking on gas condensate from North Sea Oil. In 1965 a refining and storage depot was established at Longport, Staffordshire. With increasing demands for capital, Carless Capel and Leonard became a public company in 1971. Carless Petroleum was established as subsidiary in 1973, and Carless was also involved in on-shore fields at Humbly Grove and Wytch Farm. Production ceased at Hackney Wick in the early 1970s and the administration moved from the Hope Works to Petrol House, formerly a dry cleaning factory owned by Lush and Cook. The subsidiary Carless Solvents moved to Romford in 1984 and Carless Petroleum moved to Colchester in 1977. The parent company continued trading as Carless, Capel and Leonard Ltd from 1872 to 1989. In 1989 the Company was taken over and broken up and a new company, Carless Refining and Marketing, was established as a wholly owned subsidiary of Repsol at Romford, they specialised in the production of high quality solvents, oils and speciality products for industry. The company was a leading supplier of solvents to the printing ink industry for over forty years. By the early 21st Century Carless Refining and Marketing was owned by a Spanish firm. It was then bought and merged with a company called Petrochem, (formed in 1981) to become Petrochem Carless, since when wagons bearing the new company branding have been seen on the railways.
Youngs Oils of Pumpherston and Broxburn, Clippens Oil Company of Paisley, Oakbank Oil company of Midcalder and the Midlothian Oil Company of Straiton.
These were all Scottish producers of Paraffin oils from mined shales. Paraffin (so named on account of its want of affinity with most chemical substances) was discovered more or less simultainiously by Reichenbach in Germany and by Dr Christison, of Edinburgh in about 1830. By the early 1830s people were experimenting with recovering this oil from shale deposits (up to this point these had been seen merely as colliery waste). In the 1840s a Manchester chemist by the name of James Young was asked to investigate oily deposits occuring in a coal mine at Alfreton, Derbyshire. He discovered that it contained small quantities of paraffin and set up a works to extract this material close by the mine. Extracting the valuable oil from the shale involves heating shale in the absence of oxygen to a temperature at which kerogen decomposes (pyrolyses) into gas, condensable oil, and a solid residue. Scotland's oil production began in the 1850s with James 'Paraffin' Young's first works producing oil from the coal-like Torbaneite mineral deposits near Bathgate. There was a shortage of oil (mainly for lamps) and the whale oil and vegitable oil industries could not meet the demand. Mr Young's new process seemed to have developed just at the right time, but the emergence of cheap American mineral oil reserves threatened the fledgling industry. A Midlothian pioneer William Young (no relation of James) further developed the process or refining shale and allowed Scotland's oil industry to survive. By driving off the oil in retorts (similar to those used in gas works) four types of oil could be recovered paraffin oil for burning, paraffin oil for lubricating machinery, a light volatile fluid called naphtha, and solid paraffin. The oil from the retorts was purified by mixing with sulphuric acid and allowing the acid to precipitate out the impurities. The waste material was sold as fuel (the acid was not recovered and would require regular shipments to replenish the stocks). Caustic soda was then mixed in to deal with any residual sulphuric acid and the entire process of distilation and purification was then repeated to produce the pure oils. The Oakbank works (which operated a fleet of railway tank wagons) opened in the mid 1860s (as the original patents expired) and names such as Royal Standard Lamp Oil, Sunlight Oil, and Taylor's Paraffine were all well known brands. Royal Standard Oil became (briefly) a worldwide brand (and many a Scot will tell you it may have prompted the choice of name in America of Standard Oil). During the 1914-18 War the Scottish shaleworks were amalgamated with government backing as Scottish Oil Agency, which became Scottish Oils Ltd (mainly owned by Anglo-Persian Oil Company) and expanded between 1918 and 1920 by absorbing smaller Scottish shale oil companies: Youngs, Broxburn and Philpstoun. Shale oil production in Scotland ceased in the early 1960s but there was an unsuccessful attempt to revive it in 1973. Scottish Oils Ltd still exists but is no longer in the shale oil business.
The first major foreign oil company to set up in Britain was the Anglo American Oil Co in 1888, this was the British distribution network for the American Standard Oil Co, these days known as Esso (Eastern Section Standard Oil) however Royal Daylight was the trading name and was widely used on their tank wagons. I believe they may have used the name Standard Oil Co on their bitumen wagons, but I am not at all sure on that. When they started marketing motor spirit in 1896 they adopted the name Pratt's, sold as Pratt's Motor Spirit and Pratt's perfection Spirit. In the later 1920s the apostrophy was dropped and Pratts Perfection Motor Spirit name continued in use in England until 1935-6 when first Essolube (for oils) then Esso (for petrol) replaced the older brands. Esso also sold paraffin, in the 1930s they used the Royal Daylight Paraffin brand, changing to Esso Blue after the war.
Mobil (established as the Standard Oil Company of New York, following the 1911 break up of Standard Oil) traded in Britain as the Vacuum Oil Co from 1885 (originally selling only lubricants, Mobiloil was a major brand by the 1930s). The name changed to Mobil in the 1950s when they began operating their own petrol stations, featuring their flying horse trade mark. Their oil blending and grease plant at Birkenhead (set up in 1910, after the warehouse burned down) included a grease plant and blending facilities and it was extensively developed until by 1939 it was one of the largest and most important blending units of its kind in Europe. This was bombed out in the war and rebuilt (lubricants are vital in wartime). In 1953 they opened a refinery at Coryton on the Thames. In 1996, Mobil's fuels operations in Europe were placed into a joint venture 70% owned by BP and the Mobil petrol brand disappeared from service stations. Mobil continued to sell lubricants through BP and independent service stations. In 1999 Mobil merged with Exxon and in 2000 BP acquired all the petrol retailing assets as well as the Coryton refinery (but sold it to Petroplus in 2007). Mobil returned to being purely a lubricant brand in Europe, and became the premium quality oil on sale at Esso service stations.
The industry expanded rapidly, Shell, Russian Petroleum, Anglo-Persian Oil Co, and Anglo Mexican Oil were all set up between 1890 and 1914.
Burmah Oil Company This was set up in Glasgow in 1896 with the intention of developing oil interests in India. It was an early sharebolder in Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) and was the only oil company to operate in Burma until 1963 (when the oil fields were nationalised). Burmah was promarily an oils and petrochemicals company, petrol was always something of a side line. However in the 1960s Burmah began selling via petrol stations under their own brand, in the later 1960s they bought out the Curfew discount chain of stations (which they rebranded Burmah) and the Major and Apex chains (which they did not re-brand as these were established firms). In 1966 they purchased Castrol Oil (the main British lubricant manufacturer). Halfords, the motor parts supplier, became a part of the Burmah Oil in 1969, following a takeover battle between Burmah Oil and Smiths Industries (this lasted until 1983). In the 1970s Burmah Oil ran into financial difficulties and had to be helped out by the Bank of England, in 2000 the company was bought by BP-Amoco (now BP).
British Petroleum (BP) is one of the world's largest oil companies and is today (1987) Britain's largest company. BP began life as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in 1909 and in 1917 they purchased a smaller firm called British Petroleum and established this as their main marketing subsidiary. Hence most road and rail tank wagons were marked BP rather than APOC. In 1913 the firm was partially nationalised in order to secure oil supplies for the Royal Navy. APOC changed its name to the Anglo Iranian Oil Company in 1935 but as far as I am aware the AIOC logo was not widely used, British Petroleum (in full and in a seif font) was the norm on tank wagons). The name changed again to the British Petroleum Company in 1954. The company was fully developed oil copany marketing a wide range of oils as well as petrol. They sold a lot of paraffin under the brand name 'Aladdin Pink' (the name changed after World War Two to 'Pink Paraffin'). The pink dye was added as a safety feature in order to prevent paraffin being mistaken for other liquids. An uncoloured form was sold (much more cheaply) as ‘White May’. BP acquired the chemical interests of the Distillers Company 1967 (Distillers group had purchased a small pharmaceuticals company which was doing well on the sales of a new drug called Thaidamide. This drug was then found to cause birth defects, as the new owners Distillers were held liable and had to sell most of their assets to pay the compensation and legal costs. Distillers, one of the countries biggest companies, was dramatically reduced in size).
Power Petroleum I have not found out very much about this firm. They were taken over by Shell-Mex & BP Ltd. in 1934 but the name continued in use for some time under the new ownership.
The National Benzole company was formed in 1919, Benzole refers to an additive they employed, derived from coal tar. After the war they were the UK's best selling brand but were taken over by Shell-Mex-BP in 1957 (their operation being mergesd with the Power Petroleum business) but when the Shell-BP collaboration ended in 1976 National Benzole emerged as a subsidiary of BP. The Benzone was dropped in the later 1960s as the additive was no longer available due to the switch to natural gas. In the 1980s BP steadily re-branded the stations but in 1992 a Scottish firm licenced the name and there are several stations using it, although the petrol is supplied by BP.
Shell is an Anglo-Dutch oil-development and exploration concern Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and is one of the world's biggest companies. The business originated in the early 19th century with a curio shop in East London that sold shell ornaments. By the time the railways arrived in 1830 the dealer, Marcus Samuel, had built up an international trade in copra and oriental artefacts. From 1897 the company dealt in oil and kerosene (paraffin oil) using the name Asiatic Petroleum Company and was subsequently consolidated as the Shell Transport and Trading Company. Shell Transport and Trading Co was then merged with the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company in 1907 becoming one of the worlds first multi-national companies. The company continued to expand and took over the Anglo Mexican Oil Company in the early 1930's giving the brand name Shell Mex. Prior to World War Two Shell was the best selling petrol in the UK.
Shell is the world's largest oil and gas producer, with the largest oil reserves, and is responsible for 5% of the world's oil and gas production (1987). It has 2,000 operating companies worldwide. It is also the world's largest retailer, with (1994) 40,000 petrol stations in 100 countries. Its sales turnover in 1992 amounted to more than the gross national product of any country except the 23 richest.
Cleveland Oil Cleveland petrols were originally an independent company based in North East England, established in about 1935. They were supplied by ICI with benzol and alcohol which they blended with petrol marketing their fuels as Cleveland Motor Spirits and Cleveland Discol Motor Spirit respectively. In the later 1930s (possibly just post war, sources differ), this company was acquired by the Anglo-American Oil Co (Esso), but the Cleveland name and blended fuels continued in production, trading as the Cleveland Petroleum Products Co. This gave Cleveland five different petrols at a time when many firms had only two or three. In 1973, Esso chose to end the Cleveland brand and gave up selling benzole or alcohol blends. Cleveland's 2,000 filling stations were switched to the Esso brand.
Dominion started supplying petrol to English filling stations in the 1920s and was soon acquired by the US company Marland Oil. In 1934 Dominion Motor Spirit was sold to Shell-Mex & BP Ltd, but the name continued to be used as a discount brand at free stations.
ZIP Russian Oil Products (R.O.P.) a UK registered compny that distributed Russian petrol within the UK during the 1920s and 30s using the ZIP brand in the 1930s. I believe the original name was Russian petroleum prior to the First World War. R.O.P. was sold to Regent in 1948.
Fina is the British arm of the Belgian company Petrofina, they started trading in the UK in the later 1940s
Total, a French company (a subsidiary of Compagnie Francaise des Petroles), Total was incorporated in 1955, arrived in Britain in 1958 and began using rail tanks in 1968. They preferred solus type arrangements and began buying their own petrol stations in the early 1960s which they leased to tenants.
Regent appeared in the 1920s as and indepent petrol station chain, purchased in 1930 by the Trinidad Oil Company to sell their products in the UK. Texas Oil (now known as Texaco) became involved in 1947 (some sources state this as the start date for Regent). Regent was then completely taken over by Texas Oil (Texaco) in 1956 but was then run as a joint operation by the US companies Texaco and Chevron (see Texaco below). One retailer in 1956 displayed the notice: " Sold!—Regent to America together with the independence of thousands of British garages ". The Regent brand continued in use until it was replaced by Texaco in 1967 when the joint operation with Chevron was wound up.
Jet was formed in 1953 by a group of owners of commercial vehicles
who wished to provide themselves with the motor fuels they needed at the
lowest possible price. Once established, Jet began supplying other commercial
users, at first obtaining motor fuels from Regent. The company also
began building ocean terminals and in 1958 it began importing motor fuels,
mainly from Western Germany, at prices lower than those which it paid
Regent. A survey carried out by Jet at this time showed that about 7 per cent of all retailers in the United Kingdom were free of solus ties and in 1958 the company began
supplying the retail market, though on a very small scale. In June, 1961 Jet became a subsidiary of Continental Oil Company of Delaware (better known as Conoco), described by Jet as a " big independent " with abundant sources of Libyan crude oil. It was the intention that Jet should market this oil after it had been processed in German or Italian refineries. In the same year Jet purchased its first station and introduced its first solus agreements. The company continued through difficult times, in the 1980s it expanded a bit then in 2001 it sold all its outlets, although it still supplies them with petrol.
Lobitos was formed in 1908 to operate oil concessions in Peru, South
America. Lobitos had its own refinery capacity in the
United Kingdom but its main business was as an independent supplier in South America. Its main interest in Britain was the production of specialty products
(white oils, transformer and cable oils and bitumen); petrol is produced only
as an unavoidable by-product which the company supplies to retailers, commercial
customers and ex-tank buyers. In 1964 the company's
sales of petrol amounted to 12£ million gallons. Nearly 80 per cent,
of this total was supplied to the retail market, about 70 per cent of it in
Northern Ireland where about half of the nearly 300 retailers marketing its
petrol had entered into solus arrangements. In England, on the other hand,
most of the petrol sold was to retailers without such arrangements. Lobitos
also owned a few petrol stations in the 1960s. In 1962 they became a subsidiary of Burma Oil Co.
William Briggs & Sons Ltd (based in Dundee) dealt in fuel oil and bitumen. Their original refinery was built on the Dundee site in 1931 adjacent to Dundee Gas Works, to process the coal tar produced at the gas works. Typical throughput was in the region of 100,000 tons per year and the plant produced a range of distillates including gas oil, marine diesel, lubricating oil base stocks and fuel oils are also produced. It was sold to Tarmac in 1968 and In 1992, the bitumen interests of Tarmac were acquired by the specialist Swedish refiner Nynas Petroleum Group. Today (2008) this is the only oil refinery in Scotland outside the Grangemouth complex (Grangemouth was established as Scottish Oils in 1824 by APOC, BP sold off all its petrochemical interests in 2005, the Grangemouth refinery going to INEOS, a privately-owned chemicals company).
Berry Wiggins & Co Established an oil refinery at Kingsnorth on the Hoo peninsular in Kent in 1930, accessed via a single line gated branch from the nearby Southern Railway line which ran as a three line set of long loops before serving numerous sidings in the works. This firm also operated a site at Weaste (near Manchester). The company produced bitumen from a plant at Sharnel Street on the Isle of Grain as early as 1924 but I gather their bitumen tank wagons did not appear until the later 1930s. This firm operated a large fleet of both Class A and Class B tank wagons, the latter often marked "Liquaphalt" their trade name for liquid asphalt, or bitumen. The Berry Wiggins complex ceased to refine oil in 1977, and refining at the comparatively newer BP Isle of Grain complex (built in 1951) also stopped in 1982. Subsequently, oil was shipped into the country in an already refined state, but deliveries were still made to the Isle of Grain thereafter, the last oil train not departing until 1999.
Butlers Chemicals Ltd. This company started life as a tar distillers (for details of that operation see under Lineside Industries - Coal and Wood Tar Distillers). They also went into the oil business (I am not sure when that started). Butlers pulled out of the tar distilling business in 1962, concentrating on their oil products plant centered on the new Rockingham Works at Avonmouth where they operated under the name of Butlers Chemicals Ltd. In 1972 the name changed again, to Butlers Oil Products, by which time there were Butlers branded petrol stations. The company was taken over by Fina in 1988, and then Total Oil in 2001 however the brand seems to have remained in use into the 1990s. As far as I am aware this company distributes only by road haulage from the Avonmouth plant (but I could well be wrong on that).
Lion Emulsions Ltd This company operated railway tankers carrying bituminous emulsions (fine particles of bitumen suspended in water), used for road surfacing in a technique called Cold Spray (the water allowing the normally very viscous bitumen to be sprayed onto a road surface, the water then evaporates). They were one of the last companies to operate a fleet of smaller tanks (most apparently second hand), some continuing in use into the 1980s. Cold Spray was invented at the beginning of the 1920s by Hugh Allan Mackay and George Samuel Illay in England, receiving a patent in 1922. By then, Mackay had formed his own company, Asphalt Cold Mix Limited, to exploit the patent in the United Kingdom. The secret is to electrostatically charge the bitumen particles so they do not coagulate and remain evenly suspended in the water. The French firm Colas purchased the exclusive rights to use the product in France and has since bought out Lion Emulsions, Colas was formed in 1924 to use the cold spray technique, the name Colas (for 'cold asphalt') was adopted because other firms were selling their own 'cold spray' products.
Post 1960s British Petrol Company Names
During the 1960s, Britain was a booming market and many oil companies set up a UK based distribution system. Most did not last although Total, Conoco and Murco, who all arrived at this time, are still operating their own chains of service stations.
V.I.P. was a brand introduced in 1960 by a distributor called Isherwoods. Isherwoods was established in 1934 as a wholesale distributor of petrol and other oil products. Isherwoods owned and operated a small chain of petrol stations and a fleet of road tankers and purchased bulk supplies of petrol (both imported and from British refineries) both for its own stations and for sale to other retailers and to commercial consumers. In 1951 a new company was formed to hold and operate the chain of stations leaving Isherwoods to concentrate on
wholesale distribution, originally in the Manchester area.
When the solus
system was introduced Isherwoods lost most of its retail customers (although sales to commercial users remained). In 1960 the company introduced its V.I.P. brand petrol, pitching the price to compete with the likes of Jet. Towards the end of 1963 it took over the
interests of two smaller wholesale distributors, Octane Petroleum Co. Ltd.
and Orbit Petroleum Ltd., operating respectively in the London area and in
Yorkshire, where their brands were sold at prices lower than those of the
leading petrol companies. The company acquired ocean terminals and inland
storage depots. In 1964 Signal Oil & Gas Company of California, the main supplier for the firm, bought out Isherwoods but retained the brand and the UK management. In in 1968 the brand was purchased by Occidental Oil and in the mid 1970s the brand was sold to Elf. I beieve the V.I.P. brand had disappeared by the early 1970s.
Amoco (American Oil Company, also known as also known as Standard Oil of Indiana after 1925), entered the British market in 1964. In 1957 all the divisions of Amoco were consolidated into a single company, renamed the Amoco Corporation in 1985. In 1998 Amoco merged with BP to form BP Amoco, now known as BP.
Murco established as a UK company in 1960 (as the British arm of the US oil company Murphy Oil) Murco entered the British market in 1962 by buying two small British chains EP (European Petroleum) and Olympic. Olympic was hased out by about 1970 but some EP branded stations remained. Initially they purchased an oil terminal at Grays in Essex, allowing them to tanker in their own fuel. This was followed by the development of rail fed terminals at Bedworth, Warwickshire and Theale, Berkshire to supply the expanding Murco and EP service station chains. In 1981 the company took an effective 30% interest in the (then Amoco now Elf) oil refinery in Milford Haven, Wales allowing them to refine their own North Sea Oil supplies. In 1990 the final link in the supply chain was added with the opening of the Westerleigh terminal near Bristol. Although a small company by comparison to others in the field Murco has managed to survive and thrive by reacting quickly and effectively to the ever changing market conditions. Today Murco supply over 160 company owned and 260 independently owned service stations in addition to a growing number of commercial customers. Being an independent company the benefits of rail transportation outweigh the costs of pipeline building so rail deliveries remain in use in 2007. At some point I believe they merged with Amoco and the petrol stations were branded as Amoco but I am very unsure on this.
ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd.) has manufactured petrol from coal and later creosote on Teesside since 1935 and continued to do so at least into the later 1970s (I am not sure what happened after the company was de-merged). They originally sold their product to the oil companies until 1965 when they offered the surplus for sale to retailers and in the 1970s there were ICI branded petrol stations in Yorkshire. They used hired tank wagons until the early 1970s, after which they operated some tanks themselves, some of which carried their logo.
Texaco Operated a joint distribution system with Standard Oil of California (later Chevron) from the mid 1930s using the brand name Caltex but in Britain the joint operation used the brand Regent. They purchased Regent Oil outright in 1956 and own the Havolene lubricant brand (originally a 'wax free' petroleum based oil, they bought it in 1909). Texaco opened its Milford Haven refinery in 1964 and was one of the last companies to operate the original 35 ton 4 wheel anchor mounted tanks. Caltex was wound up in 1965, at which point the Regent brand was absorbed by Texaco. Texaco merged with Chevron Oil in 2001.
Chevron Originally Standard Oil of California, became a separate company with the break up of Standard Oil in 1911. The Chevron brand first appeared in the UK in 1967 following the end of the Chevron-Texaco joint operation under the Regent banner.
Gulf Oil was a major global oil company from the 1900s to the 1980s. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979 Gulf Oil arrived in Britain in 1962. The Gulf Oil Refinery at Milford Haven operated from the mid-1960s until 1997, when refining operations ceased. The company was taken over by Chevron in 1984 but the Gulf brand has continued in use although none of the Gulf-branded petrol now sold in the UK actually comes from a Gulf refinery.
Agip(Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), established in 1926 is an Italian automotive gasoline and diesel retailer. It was a subsidiary of multinational petroleum company Eni. Agip entered the British market in 1963. In 1966 the British operation was bought out by Esso.
Sinclair, was an American firm that arrived in the 1960s and bought out the small Abco and Gainsborough chains of service stations but was bought our by ARCO in 1969.
Tenneco was another American firm which entered the UK market by buying the existing Globe and Golden outlets but I believe they sold the chain of outlets to Jet in the early 1980s.
Nafta was a company from the Soviet Union who arrived in the mid 1960s. They sold their chain to Q8 in 1987.
Atlantic Petroleum, arrived in the 1960s, became part of ARCO in 1968, sold its British network to Total by 1970.
Elf a French company, purchased Occidental's British VIP and OXY chains in 1974 and about that time merged with another big French firm but the Elf brand remained. Purchased Amoco and Heron chains in the UK in the later 1970s (I believe). Merged with Total in 2000 (new firm called TotalFinaElf, but that was never a brand). Elf name was gone by about 2003.
SOLUS
It should be noted that prior to the 1960s there were a lot of independent retailers, buying petrol from various companies. The oil companies favoured the so called 'solus' arrangement (first introduced by the American owned firms in the 1950s), where the nominally independent retailer was tied to a particular brand for several years. This lead to a number of complaints from independent retailers about oil companies refusing deliveries and Castrol (supplying lubrication oils) encouraged people to complain about solus garages not stocking their products. In the mid 1960s the Monopolies Commission compiled a report on the matter. They found that the economics of the solus arrangement, with fewer and larger deliveries to a smaller number of stations, outweighed the value of an independent retail sector (and the contention by Jet that prices to the consumer were apparently higher under this system). As a general rule the government generally dislikes small independent traders as they require a lot more work at the tax office, also the big firms offer better 'perks' to their 'friends', so the finding in favour of 'solus' is perhaps unsurprising. By the 1960s the oil companies themselves were increasingly buying out retailers and establishing their own chains of petrol stations and this trend continued thereafter. In the 1950s when the motorways were being planned there was some discussion as to petrol supplies. Motorway services were to be established at 12 mile intervals and following representations from the RAC and AA the legislation required that these offer multiple brands of petrol. In the 1990s the supermarkets, having killed off the competition on the high street, began building petrol stations at their retail outlets, which coincided with a drastic reduction in the number of petrol stations on the roads.
In 1970, there were nearly 25,000 filling stations in the UK, of which 10,000 were 'independents' (although most of which were trading under a solus arrangement). By the end of 1999, the number of filling stations had dropped to 13,700 and by the end of 1995 it was down to 9,700. In recent years, filling stations have been closing at a rate of 50 per month.
Most petrol stations offered three or four grades of petrol, some offered five and Murco offered seven, the difference being the 'octane' rating of the fuel. At some stations this was achieved by blending different petrols to produce intermediate grades in the delivery pump itself (reducing the number of tanks required). By the 1970s many stations offered three grades with some offering four.
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