Gulf Refinery, Milford Haven
The Gulf Refinery at Milford Haven was an oil refinery situated on the Pembrokeshire coast in Wales. The refinery, originally owned and operated by Gulf Oil, was opened in August 1968 by Queen Elizabeth II. The plant, constructed at a cost of approximately £35 million, produced a range of petroleum products and occupied an area of 300 acres (121.4 ha). It was initially designed to process 60,000 barrels of crude oil per day (3 million tonnes per year). The capacity was increased to a day of oil. Oil import Gulf Oil's crude oil was principally obtained from Nigeria and Kuwait through joint ventures with BP. Crude was shipped to Bantry Bay in Ireland in 312,000 DWT (deadweight ton) ships. The Bantry Bay facility had a storage capacity of one million tonnes. It was commissioned just before the refinery opened at a cost of £13m. From Bantry Bay crude oil was shipped in 100,000 DWT ships to Gulf's refineries in Milford Haven, Denmark and Rotterdam. Operations The Milford Haven refinery was integrated with two petro-chemical plants, using oil products from the refinery as feed-stock. One produced 50,000 tonnes a year of benzene and the other 100,000 tonnes a year of cyclohexane.