Emsland refinery

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Power plant and port of the refinery on the Dortmund-Ems Canal
The refinery on the northwest shore of storage basin Geeste seen from
The refinery as seen from the Dortmund-Ems Canal

The BP Lingen refinery is a fuel refinery in Lower Saxony Lingen , in the Emsland district .

history

Establishment of the Emsland Oil Refinery Union

The establishment and construction of the refinery in Lingen are closely linked to the discovery of the oil fields in the Emsland. In 1942, for example, the Lingen oil field near the refinery was the first oil field in the Emsland to be developed. The Emlichheim and Georgsdorf oil fields were discovered in 1943, Adorf in 1947 and Scheerhorn and Rühle (oil field) in 1949 .

Due to the nature of the Emsland crude oil, which is one of the heaviest crude oil in the world, it had to be brought to refineries in Hanover or the Ruhr area at great expense. In order to keep the crude oil liquid, it must be possible to heat it at the loading and unloading point and storage facilities must be available at the loading location. This made the transport extraordinarily expensive, which greatly reduced the profitability of oil production.

The first considerations by Wintershall and Elwerath to build a processing plant near the oil wells go back to 1948. As a result of the Marshall Plan and the Emsland Plan , the companies Wintershall, Elwerath and Preussag decided in 1949 to build a refinery in Emsland . In 1950, construction of the refinery began in the then still independent municipality of Holthausen. Preussag ceded its shares to Wintershall as early as 1951.

The resulting refinery initially operated as GEE - Erdöl-Raffinerie Emsland trade union . By union, however, was not meant the employee representation, but a mining union under which the operation of a refinery was possible at that time. It was only when Elwerath left on January 1, 1969 and Wintershall took over the shares on January 1, 1970, from GEE to ERE - Erdöl-Raffinerie Emsland.

In connection with the construction of the refinery, in 1952 the Federal Ministry of Economics provided investment loans for the Erdöl-Raffinerie Emsland trade union for the purchase of Gasolin shares by Wintershall and Deutsche Erdöl AG . In addition to its own refinery in Dollbergen , Gasolin obtained a large part of its fuel and lubricants from here.

The construction of the refinery

A sand dune area between the Emsland route and the Dortmund-Ems Canal in the then still independent municipality of Holthausen was selected as the location . During the planning of the refinery, it quickly became clear that the estimated 76% residue in the form of heavy fuel oil from crude oil distillation could not be bought. At that time, the market for heavy heating oil was largely covered by local hard coal, in Lingen mainly by the Ibbenbüren mine . The planned construction of a hydrogenation plant to convert the residues was soon abandoned because of the hydrogen required .

In order to remedy this situation and to greatly increase the percentage of gasoline yield, a thermal and a catalytic cracker - coupled in one refinery - were installed in the Emsland oil refinery for the first time.

The catalytic cracking was carried out by a Houdry tower, which worked according to the method of the chemist Eugene Houdry . This cracker had a stately height of just over a hundred meters and was the symbol of the refinery and the southern Emsland for many years. The first coker in the Federal Republic of Germany that works according to the delayed coker method was built as a thermal cracker .

It was also necessary to build a power plant to supply its own electricity and steam due to the poor infrastructure of the Emsland.

The Werkbahn was founded as one of the first departments during construction. It was necessary to bring materials that arrived by rail to the magazine. Most of the locomotive drivers were taken over by the Lingen – Berge – Quakenbrück small railway , which was shut down at the same time. Other skilled workers were taken on by the Lingen repair shop .

Commissioning and expansion

In 1953 the refinery was completed and included a distillation , catalytic cracking plant, coker , refining and gas post-processing facility. The throughput was initially 550,000 t / a. The crude oil was obtained exclusively from the nearby fields in Emsland and partly from distant fields by tank wagons.

A first reformer was put into operation in 1956 to increase the octane number of gasoline. With the construction of a vacuum distillation in 1958 the crackers could be relieved and the crude oil consumption increased to 1 million tons.

In 1959 a second processing plant for foreign crude oil with an initial capacity of 1.5 million tons was put into operation. Due to customs restrictions, the processing of foreign crude oil had to be strictly separated from German crude oil until 1964. At the same time, the NWO pipeline was connected to the refinery.

As the throughput of German crude oil continued to increase, plant 1, which processed German crude oil, was expanded in 1962. An additional crude oil distillation and another coker was built. The throughput of the Houdry tower as a catalytic cracker was also increased.

In 1967, the reformer 1 was converted to produce benzene, and in 1970, the N-paraffin plant was built to manufacture petrochemical products. A calcination facility for further processing the petroleum coke from the coker was built in 1971. In 1970 Wintershall became the sole shareholder. Since 2002 the refinery has been operated by Deutsche BP , which has been operating under the name "BP Europa SE" since 2010.

From August 2006 to October 2006, a so-called general overhaul took place for the first time in the history of the refinery. In the course of this, all systems were shut down. Then over 650 heat exchangers and over 1000 pressure vessels were removed and tested by the TÜV . After the objects were checked and re-installed, the refinery resumed operations at the beginning of October 2006. During this total shutdown, over 3200 people were at times working in the refinery. The cost of this action amounted to over 90 million euros. Another major overhaul took place in autumn 2011, during which 70 percent of the system was shut down and serviced by around 600 own and up to 2,500 external employees.

Use of raw materials and transport

Refinery railway line

The refinery processes 5.1 million t of raw materials per year, of which 4.5 million t is crude oil (1 million t German, 3.5 million t foreign). In addition, 0.6 million t of feedstock are used in production. 4.9 million tons of products are made from the crude oil and the feedstock.

The majority is delivered by pipeline through the north-west oil pipeline and smaller oil pipelines directly from nearby oil fields. Other parts of the domestic oil reach the refinery in trains on its own works railway , which also dispatches the majority of the refined products.

About 39% of the product is transported by road, about 38% via its own port on the Dortmund-Ems Canal , about 21% by rail and 2% by product pipeline.

Products

Typical products are made in the refinery such as:

In addition, petrochemical substances such as:

Employee

The Emsland oil refinery employs a total of 750 people, 73 of whom are trainees.

Incidents

On the evening of March 28, 2011 around 11 p.m. there were several deflagrations when loading the tanker Alpsray with premium gasoline in the port of the refinery, in which large quantities of the gasoline ignited. The cause of the fire lay in a ventilation system on the ship and was not the responsibility of the refinery, as was determined in a judicial investigation. The work of the plant fire brigade and the volunteer fire brigades lasted until the next day; A total of around 250 people from the fire brigade , rescue service , THW , police and authorities of the Emsland district were deployed with 39 vehicles and two boats. The fire brigade used around 230 m³ of foam compound during the fire fighting operation . In the course of the next few days, this extensive use of fire-fighting foam led to fish deaths in the Dortmund-Ems Canal.

During the work within the major overhaul in 2011, another incident occurred on October 4, 2011 in the refinery. At around 7:15 a.m., a fire broke out in crude oil distillation 1. The refinery fire brigade was able to put out the fire after 20 minutes. Two people were injured.

literature

  • Helga and Hermann Lindwehr: Explosion in the refinery port . In: Fire Department ( ISSN  0500-6260 ), issue 7–8 / 2011, pp. 36–38.
  • Fireball over Lingen . In: Fire Brigade Journal Lower Saxony / Bremen ( ISSN  1618-5307 ), issue 4/2011, pp. 15-17.
  • Georg Weßling: Our oil plant. Emsland oil refinery. People, technology and stories in 50 years. Edited by the Deutsche BP Aktiengesellschaft, Emsland Oil Refinery, Lingen. Burgtor-Verlag, Lingen 2003, ISBN 3-921-663-25-3 .

Web links

Commons : Erdöl-Raffinerie Emsland  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weßling: Our oil factory. P. 10: "Processing in the eligible area"
  2. ↑ Weßling: Our oil factory. P. 80: "From GEE to ERE".
  3. ↑ Weßling: Our oil factory. P. 19: "Distilling and Refining".
  4. ↑ Weßling: Our oil factory. P. 19: "No need for heavy heating oil".
  5. ↑ Weßling: Our oil factory. P. 20: "Petrolkos for Industry".
  6. ↑ Weßling: Our oil factory. P. 30: "The refinery is growing".
  7. ↑ Weßling: Our oil factory. Chapter "Expansion in operation 1"
  8. ^ Wilfried Roggendorf: Major overhaul at the Lingen refinery . Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , September 16, 2011, accessed on August 16, 2016.
  9. ↑ a b c Data and facts: key figures from BP Lingen . BP website, accessed August 16, 2016.
  10. ↑ Supply of the ERE by the NWO. Nord-West Oelleitung GmbH, archived from the original on July 3, 2013 ; accessed on August 16, 2016 .
  11. ^ Erdöl-Raffinerie Emsland (BP-Lingen): Environmental Report 2010 . March 5, 2010, accessed on August 16, 2016, p. 5 (pdf; 1.8 MB).
  12. ↑ Burkhard Müller: In March 2011, the ship catches fire: BP Lingen: Refinery is not to blame for explosion . Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , April 22, 2015, accessed on August 16, 2016.
    Major fire in the port: tanker explodes in Lingen . Spiegel Online , March 29, 2011, accessed August 16, 2016.
  13. ↑ Fireball over Lingen , p. 17.
  14. ↑ Lindwehr: Explosion in refinery harbor. P. 36.
  15. ↑ Lindwehr: Explosion in refinery harbor. P. 38.
    Criticism of crisis management: Fish deaths: “The district seems to be overwhelmed” . Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , April 13, 2011, accessed on August 16, 2016.
  16. ↑ One employee seriously injured: Fire on the premises of the BP refinery in Lingen . Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , October 4, 2011, accessed on August 16, 2016.

Coordinates: 52 ° 33 ′ 31 ″  N , 7 ° 18 ′ 34 ″  E