Oil

THE STORY OF THE MILFORD HAVEN WATERWAY

Chapter 10

Oil

It was in the 1950s when Milford Haven still came under naval jurisdiction as the dockyard port of Pembroke that both the British Petroleum and Esso Petroleum companies turned their thoughts to the extensive waters of the Haven because of the steadily increasing size of ships in their tanker fleets. Both companies planned to build deep water terminals for vessels up to 100,000 tons, later considerably increased after the closure of the Suez Canal during the Suez crisis of 1967. The long voyage round Cape of Good Hope was uneconomical for small carriers so ships' tonnage increased from 65,000 tons in 1960 to over 200,000 tons in the 1970s by which time Milford Haven was Britain's major oil port, indeed was second in overall tonnage to London.

In 1958, with the prospect of this much greater usage of the port, a new civil port authority, The Milford Haven Conservancy Board, (from 1986 it became the Milford Haven Port Authority) was set up, its area of jurisdiction bounded by the high water mark on the shores of Milford Haven 'and the approaches thereto, including all bays, creeks, pools, inlets and rivers as far as the tide flows'. This brought within the Board's jurisdiction the Cleddau river to Haverfordwest and Canaston Bridge, the Cresswell and Carew rivers to Cresswell and Carew and the Pembroke river as far as Pembroke, and by 1960 effective control of the navigation in the whole Haven had passed to the Board.

First in the field, Esso obtained permission to build a refinery and ocean terminal on the north side of the Haven in 1957, only the second oil refinery to be built in the UK since the war. Three years later British Petroleum built a deep water terminal on the south shore and linked this by a pipe-line to their refinery at Llandarcy. Regent (later Texaco) followed in 1964, Gulf in 1968 and Amoco in 1973. Their construction created hundreds of jobs, though many of them could not be filled by the local labour force. That built for Esso provided short time employment for around 3,500 construction workers and later 2,000 were employed on the Gulf Oil Company site. The refineries themselves were not labour intensive but in 1980 the three that were then operational had created around 2,000 direct or indirect jobs and generated somewhere in the region of £6m in direct and indirect salaries-money which, for the most part, was spent in Pembrokeshire.

By 1960 the Esso jetty was ready to receive tankers and the first, the £550 Portsmouth, berthed at the terminal in July of that year, assisted by two tugs belonging to R. and J.H. Rea Ltd (later part of Gory Ship Towage Ltd). The occasion, however, was marred when there was an explosion followed by a fire on the tanker while she was still alongside, although the tugs, equipped with firefighting equipment, were soon able to extinguish the blaze.

The initial design capacity of the installation (opened by the Duke of Edinburgh) was 100,000 barrels of crude oil a day and in 1973, after the expansion of the refinery, this almost doubled to a capacity of 180,000 barrels per day. However, by 1979 there had been a considerable downturn in the demand for oil products due to the great excess of refining capacity in Europe. Refineries were already closing elsewhere in the UK and in 1983 Esso closed the Milford refinery to concentrate on its Fawley refinery which had been their first in the UK. The impact of the Esso closure was a considerable one for the port, for the refinery had accounted for approximately 25% of the Haven's oil traffic. Today a decision has still to be made on a future use for the Esso jetty.

British Petroleum, too, were discovering that Britain had an excess refining capacity. Their ocean terminal at Angle Bay had been built to meet an increasing demand for crude oil and also to accommodate the larger tankers of the mid-1950s. Their jetties at Queen's Dock, Swansea, which fed the nearby Llandarcy refinery were unable to cater for tankers carrying more than 28,000 tons of crude oil and the cheapest option lay in enlarging the refinery and building a terminal at Angle Bay. Popton Fort and the surrounding land was purchased for the construction of a tank farm at Kilpaison with a jetty with two berthing heads. From here the oil was pumped 62 miles to Llandarcy.

In April 1985 BP announced that their Llandarcy Refinery was to be reduced to a facility for producing specialised oil products and that their operations at the Angle Bay Terminal were to come to an end. The jetties were then leased to Texaco who took over the supply of 'BP requirements for petroleum products in South Wales, the Midlands and the west of England.

The feeling of hope engendered by the proliferation of oil companies in Pembrokeshire had been clear in the comments of the local Member of Parliament, Desmond Donnelly, at the sod-cutting ceremony of the Regent refinery in 1963 when he said: 'This is the rebirth of Pembrokeshire, I only wish the men who were discharged from Pembroke Dockyard during the dark depressing days were here today to see it taking place'. He was not to know how relatively short lived this oil boom was to be, but Texaco, like Total Fina, has survived the many closures. Covering an area of 550 acres at Rhoscrowther it plays a vital role in the county employing a workforce of hundreds and putting about £29 million into the local economy each year through salaries, rates and local labour.

The company made history in 1975 when the first cargo of North Sea oil (rather than the then usual Middle East import) to arrive in Milford Haven came in at its jetty. Today 75% of the refinery's crude oil comes from the North Sea coming in on as many as five tankers a day. In one week it will receive about a million barrels of crude oil (a barrel equals almost 159 litres or 35 gallons) and produces 3.5 million gallons of petrol daily.

There had been fears as the new century dawned that Texaco was planning to close the Pembroke refinery, its only 100% owned refinery in Europe, but these were allayed a few months later when plans were announced for a £44m investment to upgrade the plant. A new low sulphur process unit will enable the company to meet the European Union's sulphur specification standards ahead of the 2005 deadline and at the same time safeguard the future of the 450 full time and 300 contract workers.

By 1968 the Gulf refinery was in production at Waterston, two miles east of Milford Haven, its jetty from Weir Point four miles further from the open sea than the Esso jetty. Originally constructed as a simple hydro-skimmimg refinery for production of a range of fuel products, it also included facilities for the manufacture of petrochemicals but these were closed down in 1982 and later demolished. By 1993 the refinery had been upgraded so that the daily throughput increased from 85,000 to 115,000 barrels per day. In 1977 Gulf, together with Texaco, formed the Pembroke Cracking Company to build and operate a fluid catalytic plant alongside the Texaco refinery, Texaco holding a 65% interest in the company and Gulf 35%. ('Cracking' increases the yield of petrol from crude oil bv intense heat and pressure and further breaking down the oil by the introduction of a chemical catalyst, eventually producing a higher grade, high octane petrol.) The plant, situated on the Texaco site, and linked with Gulf by a series of five pipelines running beneath the waterway, was commissioned in 1981. A Vacuum Distillation Unit was constructed at the refinery during this same period to feed this 65,000 barrels per day joint venture and in 1990 the cracker was upgraded to a throughput of 90,000 barrels per day.

Three years later an Isomerisation Unit was commissioned to enhance the Gulf refinery's production of unleaded petrol and investment in facilities for enhanced sulphur removal and the production of cleaner fuels followed. But in 1998, this apparently thriving company which had survived a disastrous explosion and fire in 1994, closed and was sold to the Dutch oil company, Petroplus, whose main area of activity is the storage of oil for third parties. Texaco bought out Gulfs share in the cracking company.

Amoco (a subsidiary of Standard Oil of Indiana) which came on stream in 1973, was the last of the refineries to be built at Milford and, now as Total Fina, is a lively survivor of the vicissitudes of the oil industry. As well as having large interests in exploration and production in the North Sea, Amoco was expanding its retailing and marketing activities in the early 70s and needed a suitable site for a UK refinery. The refinery was built two miles inland from Gellyswick Bay with a 715 metre jetty which accommodates three berths. The first can take crude oil tankers of up to 275,000 dead weight tonnes, and at the second and third berths refinery end products such as LPG, jet fuel, petrol, diesel and heating oil are loaded into tankers of up to a maximum of 30,000 dead weight tonnes.

During the construction of the jetty a total of 393 tubular steel piles, mainly of 30 and 36 inch diameter, were driven into the sea bed to support the jetty. The project also required the dredging of approximately 550,000 cubic metres of rock and sand for the berth pockets and approaches. Thirteen pipelines connect the jetty to the refinery, passing beneath Milford Haven Golf Course, two of which carry the crude oil while the others carry refined products, water, electricity and telephone cables to the tanker berths. Its 69 tanks hold either crude oil awaiting the refining process, or the end products of the process itself.

Murco acquired a 30% share of the refinery in 1978, a move which enabled the company to upgrade the plant, and in 1981 a £94m catalytic cracking unit was completed. Some years later, at the cost of £37m, an Isomerisation Unit was added to meet the requirements of producing unleaded petrol and procedures for reducing the sulphur content of diesel fuel followed.

In 1990, when the French oil company, Elf, was expanding its refining and marketing business it purchased Amoco's downstream business in the UK which included a 70% share of the Milford Haven refinery and at the end of the year 2000 the company became a part of the Total Fina group.

In an area of so much industry it is almost inevitable that there will be some incidents and the Haven has seen its share of accidents and oil spills, although the first 'spill' came in 1936, long before Milford became an oil port, when the oil tanker SA Banda Sharpur became stranded on Dale beach and oil was discharged into the harbour. Further oil spillages occurred during the breaking up of vessels at T.W. Ward's yard at Pill Point and from time to time spillages were reported on various beaches, but as the source could never be traced the Port Health Authority was, at that time, powerless to take action.

A fire which raged at the Amoco refinery in September 1983-exactly 43 years after the massive fires in the Llanreath oil tanks caused by the Luftwaffe-injured seven firemen and is remembered as one of the biggest peace-time fires ever known in the UK, burning so brightly that, at midnight, the street lights at Herbrandston switched off. The intense heat melted thick metal plates and black columns of smoke rose several thousands of feet high. The fire was thought to have been started when burning material from a flarestack landed on the roof of a crude oil storage tank-the largest in the refinery. The tank was capable of holding 600,000 barrels of oil but was only half full at the time. As the fire intensified it 'boiled over' causing the flames to extend over a four acre area. During a 50-hour period 150 firemen from all over Wales fought the blaze attempting to blanket it with more than 120,000 gallons of foam brought in by sea and road. Twenty-five appliances were in attendance with 40 pumps, six hydraulic platforms, 14 foam tenders and 66 commercial tenders.

Today the dying village of Rhoscrowther is best known for lying under the shadow of the Texaco oil refinery and being the victim of two massive explosions at the plant, explosions which led the majority of the residents to flee the once peaceful area where they had lived all their lives.

These were the people who had bitterly opposed what they saw as the intrusion of the multinational company in 1964, indeed some of them people who had subsequently lost their childhood homes to the bulldozers as the refiner)' was built. Further local opposition came in 1979 when an expansion programme brought an influx of 2,500 construction workers with little of the additional skilled work being available to the men of the village.

This long, uneasy relationship between the oil company and the people of Rhoscrowther came to a head on a January day in 1992 when the village was rocked by an explosion during maintenance work on the catalytic cracker. Twenty-six Texaco workers were injured and many of the people who had fled from their homes said they were too frightened to return, even for their most precious possessions. With angry protests ringing in their ears Texaco offered to buy every home in the village, an offer which 24 of the villagers took up and moved away at a cost to the company of £2.5m. The post office subsequently closed and over a period of 12 months all the unoccupied property was demolished.

Albert and Peggy Powell who had lived in Rhoscrowther for 57 years remained, together with brother and sister Merfyn and Gwen Lewis who were brought up in a cottage which had stood on the site of the refinery. Neither family wanted to make a fresh start but their resolve was severely tested two years later. Early one Sunday in July 1994 the county experienced one of the worst electrical storms in living memory. At 7.20 a.m. the first lightning bolt hit the ground and by 10 a.m more than 400 bolts had scorched the earth in a 30 mile radius round the refinery. The Esso refinery was hit several times and the fractioning column at Texaco sparked small fires which appeared to be quickly extinguished. At Gulf one process plant had to be shut down because of the huge fluctuations in the electrical supply as the storm raged. Then, at lunch time, a hundred foot fireball ripped through the centre of the Texaco refinery, one of the most modern in Europe. The blast caused tremors over a three mile radius shattering windows in Milford's main street, and could be heard 30 miles away.

Subsequent investigation revealed that the storm had caused severe fluctuations in the temperature and pressure gauges resulting in the pressure inside a flair-off pipe building up until the metal could no longer take the strain. A 20 ton ball of boiling oil and gas escaped, exploding in the air and causing a series of further fires and explosions. What were described as 'errors of judgement, faulty equipment [a rusty pipe] and inadequate training' caused millions of pounds worth of damage to the plant and cost the companies not only fines, but £180,000 in compensation to residents, claims for damages by oil workers plus 80% of the considerable fire fighting costs. They then spent a further £9 million upgrading the system, enabling Texaco to claim that their Pembrokeshire refinery now has the most advanced monitoring and alarm system in the industry.

But it was an event that sounded the death knell for Rhoscrowther. More of the remaining residents departed, the pub closed, and by the end of the year the 14th-century church of St. Edmunds held its last service, and with the church closed its 71-year-old organist Miss Myfanwy Llewellyn also left her home.

The economic repercussions of this disaster where not confined to Texaco. Gulf had a 40% share in the catalytic cracker plant from the time it was commissioned at Rhoscrowther in 1981. With the Texaco refinery shut down for a period of 18 weeks Gulfs production plunged from 60,000 barrels of gasoline per day to 30,000 and the company had to buy in both gasoline component material and gasoline itself to meet the needs of its UK customers.

The Milford Haven Port Authority which levies charges on shipping using the Haven suffered losses of some £100,000 as a result of lost trade during the shut down with the drop in the number of tankers using the waterway. Gory Towage which provided 24-hour safety cover were also affected; while their crews continued to provide the cover there was no revenue coming in from their usual refinery work.

In a 1996 court case the two companies, Texaco and Gulf Oil, were each fined £100,000 and ordered, jointly, to pay costs of £143,000 after admitting serious breaches of health and safety legislation.

There were some benefits, however, for 1,750 men, many of them locally based, were brought in to get the refinery back into production and those who came in from outside the county brought a welcome boost to the B & B sector. Presumably the public houses also benefitted, though possibly to a lesser degree than in the days of the 'navvies' who flooded the county at the time of the building of the railway.

Yet this 'benefit' was short lived for in 1996 came news of the impending closure of Gulf Oil Refinery as part of a merger with Elf / Murco. Gulf had a direct workforce of between 250 and 270 jobs, provided 100 contract jobs on the 450-acre Waterston site and 700 jobs in associated services and industry. Its spending on wages, rates and services mounted to an annual figure of £22-25 million. It was also a company known within the community as a good neighbour. Over a period of 25 years it had provided more than £55,000 to Pembrokeshire undergraduates through its scholarship awards and had invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in sponsorships, charities and voluntary organisations. The Gulf closure in 1998 followed that of the Royal Naval Armament Depots at Milford Haven and Trecwn, the closure of RAF Brawdy and US Brawdy, cuts in the Pembroke RN Dockyard and the departure of the Rescue helicopters and the German Army from their training base at Castlemartin-a combined loss of 1,500 civilian jobs and 2,000 servicemen. At the same time Pembroke Power station had been mothballed (eventually to close with demolition begun in January 2001) and the Port of Pembroke was in receivership. Local incomes were reported to be 30% below the UK average and among the worst in the European Community even before the Gulf closure. On top of all this, it was also estimated that 60 fewer ships would use the Haven.

In amongst all this came the Sea Empress disaster, as a result of which 226 operators in tourism claimed £46m in compensation. It had long been appreciated that the activity of massive tankers in the busy oil port which brought prosperity to the area, also brought the threat of a disaster waiting to happen. That disaster occurred on the night of Thursday 15 February 1996.

As the 147,000 tonne supertanker Sea Empress was being piloted through the treacherous rocky entrance to Milford Haven on the final stage of her three day voyage from Grangemouth to the Texaco refinery, the pilot lost control in the strong tide and she ran aground on rocks in Mill Bay just off St. Ann's Head.

The vessel was carrying a full cargo of North Sea light crude oil and on that initial grounding she suffered immediate and extensive damage as her oil tanks f were ruptured. It was not realised at the time that the tanker was already leaking a significant quantity of her cargo, a flow which continued over the course of a week until 72,000 tons of oil had been released into the waters of the Haven. Haverfordwest aerodrome was immediately opened and salvage equipment was rushed to the scene.

Two days after the initial grounding the vessel was pulled clear of its original position but when the holding cables snapped the engine room flooded, the Russian crew was evacuated and, as the gales grew in intensity, the tanker hit the rocks again, sustaining more damage as the hull was holed. The salvage team which had been landed on the vessel was hampered by the risk of explosion, a danger created by oxygen being sucked into the damaged cargo and ballast tanks, and during the Saturday afternoon the team was helicoptered from the ship for personal safety.

Weather conditions deteriorated still further and the tanker grounded for a third time after drifting across the Haven and it was not until Wednesday 21 February that she was refloated and towed to Herbrandston berth at Milford Haven. It is greatly to the credit of the salvage team, working in extreme conditions, that the ship was saved and the remaining 70,000 tons of oil was removed and pumped into tanks. Despite the attempts to control the spillage with floating booms and spray from specially fitted aircraft, around 200 km of the Pembrokeshire coastline was polluted. During the course of the clean up operation 445 tonnes of dispersant was used in the battle against pollution.

In this, the third worst oil spill in British maritime history (after the Torrey Canyon off the Cornish coast in 1967 and the Brae roff the Shetlands in 1993) several Maritime and Nature Reserves, 35 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and 20 National Trust properties were affected. It is thought that tens of thousands of seabirds died (the Sea Empress Environmental Evaluation Committee estimated that     3,500 scoda duck had been killed and the cushion star fish in West Angle Bay were almost decimated), fisheries as far afield as the rivers Taf and Tywi were closed for nearly six weeks at the start of the 1996 season, while it was said that commercial fishing suffered losses of up to £10m and the clean up work, which continued intensively over a period of six weeks cost a minimum of £60m.

At the court hearing in January 1999, when the Port Authority admitted a charge (brought by the Environment Agency) of causing pollution by allowing oil to enter the water, it was stated that the Liberian Registered Sea Empress was built in 1993 with a single skinned hull-prior to the report on the Braer oil spill which recommended that tankers should have double skinned hulls. It was also revealed that the port's radar did not meet international guidelines. The system had been in place since 1986 and had gradually deteriorated until by mid-1994 it was known it would need replacing. Evidence was given that at the time of the Sea Empress grounding the radar would have been incapable of providing any observation of the ship's entry to the west channel, precluding the possibility of the duty officer identifying the danger the pilot was sailing into and warning him accordingly.

Although the fine of £4m was welcomed by environmentalists as befitting the seriousness of the oil spill it was greeted with dismay by many in the Pembrokeshire community as a double whammy for an area which had already suffered greatly from the spill, and headlines such as 'Job hopes of hundreds hit by £4m fine' proliferated in the local press.

Port Authority General Manager Mr. Ted Sangster wrote to the 200 plus workforce reassuring them that there would be no immediate job losses but adding that the fine would greatly impair the future viability of the business. In addition to the immediate staff which includes pilots, marine staff who operate the launches and port control, administration staff, staff at Milford docks and marina, the Ro-Ro ferry terminal, ship repair business, crane hire company and Pembroke Port the work of the Authority supports thousands of spin-off jobs in West Wales. In addition a turnover of over £1 billion from companies making use of the waterway depends on the continuing and successful operation of the facilities provided by the Port Authority.

Once again the outlook seemed bleak for Milford Haven. Major job creating projects scheduled to contribute significantly to Pembrokeshire's fragile economy were put on hold.

But again, as so often in the history of Milford, there came a respite when, on appeal in March 2000, the fine was slashed to £750,000.

No longer restricted by the heavy debt burden of a £4m fine the Authority launched plans to spend that sum constructively over a several year period on a variety of projects, with their first priority improving the safety of the port which is now the fifth largest in the UK. The building of a new pilot boat went ahead, the navigation buoys were upgraded and closed circuit TV cameras have been installed in the radar station to feed visual links back to the control centre at Hakin. The lesson of the Sea Empress was truly learned.

Following renewed calls for increased protection for the sensitive coastline skirting the oil terminal at Milford Haven, more good news for the safety of shipping in the Haven came early in 2001 when the government announced that the emergency heavy duty towing vessels which protect Britain's coastline in winter will be on duty all the year round. There is the possibility, too, of an extra tug being positioned in the Irish Sea. The need had been highlighted by a near miss on Christmas Eve 1999 when the 1,500 tonne Blackfriars, carrying 1,800 litres of fuel oil, had to be hauled off a Pembrokeshire beach by the St. David's lifeboat. While lengthy negotiations were taking place to secure the services of a rescue tug (which finally arrived from Falmouth, seven hours after the tanker grounded) the vessel had been refloated. The Marine Accident Investigations report into the incident recorded that the local tug's response was restricted because of its contractual agreement with the oil companies that in, bad weather it will look after vessels already in the Milford Haven' waterway. Had a tug responded it would have left only one tug available to cover any major emergency that might arise at one of the oil terminals.

With Milford's unhappy experience of oil pollution it seems only fitting that it is here that the greatest expertise in dealing with oil spills may be found. The D.V. Howells company, with 40 years experience in oil spill response, is one of only 12 organisations in the world accredited to the International Maritime Organisation for Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation training. It is in its purpose built Marine Pollution Salvage Centre on Milford docks that the government's stockpile of strategic oil pollution and salvage equipment is housed, ready to be deployed by the company in time of emergency. The expertise of its workforce is called on world-wide on a consultancy basis and in one year over 100 harbourmasters, senior managers and supervisors were trained at the centre. The company, too, is involved with foreign governments in reviewing their oil spill preparedness and response capability, hosting the representatives at the Centre or travelling to the client's own facility which has included places as distant as Nigeria and Azerbaijan.

The decision during 2001 to allow Marathon Oil to drill a second exploratory well for gas in the dragon field 21 miles off the Pembrokeshire coast could be good news for the oil refineries which are handicapped by a lack of high pressure mains gas in the area. A well was drilled in 1994 in 315 feet of water and the request then for a second well was refused by the Department of the Environment and Transport on safety grounds, due to concern over the risk to shipping. Marathon Oil subsequently supplied a marine risk assessment to the Department which concluded that the field was situated in a moderate traffic area and would have a marginal effect on the navigation of vessels. The earlier exploration had met with opposition from conservationists who said that the sensitive marine sites along Cardigan Bay and the Pembrokeshire coast faced 'unacceptable risks' from the drilling operations. The Department then imposed stringent restrictions on the operation which included a ban on drilling within three miles of the coastline.

The discovery of gas in November 1994 brought with it the possibility- that oil was also to be found in the area and hopes, for some, of a yet unrealized oil bonanza, of truly local origin.