Glen Davis Shale Oil Works
The Glen Davis Shale Oil Works was a shale oil extraction plant, in the Capertee Valley, at Glen Davis, New South Wales, Australia, which operated from 1940 until 1952. It was the last oil-shale operation in Australia, until the Stuart Oil Shale Project in the late 1990s. For the period of 1865–1952, it provided one fifth of the shale oil produced in Australia.
History
The shale oil industry at Glen Davis was developed for production of shale oil for national defence purposes, although the basis of this project was the 1934 report of the Newnes Investigation Committee, which looked at ways to decrease the number of unemployed miners in the region. The project was operated by National Oil Proprietary Ltd., a company created as a special purpose vehicle by G. F. Davis of Davis Gelantine. A public notice in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, on 28 May 1936, invited offers for developing the oil industry in the Glen Davis area. The company was established by private interests with financial support from the Commonwealth of Australia and New South Wales governments.Construction of the shale oil works started in 1938 and the plant was commissioned in 1939, with operations starting on 3 January 1940. During World War II, shale oil produced by the Glen Davis Shale Oil Works was considered to be a strategic resource. In 1941, of shale oil were produced.
During the calendar years 1943 to 1945 inclusive, the Glen Davis plant refined around 2,000,000 gallons of crude shale oil that had been produced from the mines and NTU retorts of Lithgow Oil Proprietary Ltd, at Marangaroo, near Lithgow. Under wartime conditions, that company had designed and constructed its own NTU retorts based on information from a Bureau of Mines publication. The Marangaroo shale deposit was small but exceptionally rich, assaying 237 gallons per long ton.
In 1942, a visiting party from the US Board of Economic Warfare recommended that the plant be expanded using Renco retorts, and an order was placed to supply these from the US but that order was later cancelled. A Renco retort, which had been successfully tested by Standard Oil at Newcastle, was transported to Glen Davis but not used there. Despite expert opinion, Glen Davis remained committed to its 'modified Pumpherston' or 'Fell' retort design.
In 1942, under the National Security Act, the government took over the company and in August 1949 acquired the private shareholdings. After expansion in 1946—to a nominal capacity of of petrol per year—a shortage of mined shale constrained its output. In 1947, the refinery section of the plant was only operating 70-days during the first half of that year; not enough crude shale oil was produced by the retorts, which were only processing about 400 short tons of shale per calendar day. Productivity was poor and the works' losses were only limited by a petrol excise rebate on the oil that it produced. Securing sufficient skilled labour was a problem, due to the isolated location of Glen Davis. The workforce was around 600.
In December 1950, it was decided to end the project. In 1951, the last full year before closure, it produced only and lost £507,637—consisting of a trading loss of £206,078, depreciation of £124,903, and interest of £176,656—revenue from petrol sales was £263,156 but wages, salaries, stores and insurance costs were £501,951. Had the plant achieved even half of its design throughput in 1951, it would have been profitable but, by the end of 1951, the accumulated losses totalled 84% of capital and advances. To the end, the continuing inability to mine sufficient shale to feed the retorts was the cause of the works' losses. Plans to change the method of mining from 'bord and pillar' to 'longwall' never eventuated.
Government funding ceased in 1952, and Glen Davis was closed on 30 May. Although some syndicates had an interest to the facility, no deal was concluded. The closure caused a 'stay down' strike by miners and other workers kept the retorts running without being paid. The 'stay down' strike ended after 26 days, without success, when the Australian Council of Trade Unions decided not to support the strike.
The works had been the site of contention between communist-inspired and non-communist trade union leadership, particularly between the Miner's Federation—covering the mine workers—and the Australian Workers' Union—covering workers at the retorts and refinery. In 1948, the miners' union refused to allow Polish immigrants—eight of the men were experienced coal miners—to work in the shale mine but the same men were welcomed by the AWU. The miner's resistance to the Poles' working in the mine, seems to have been based on a perception of their political views rather than their ethnicity.
Some saw the rigorous enforcement of the 'darg'—a work quota—by communist-led miners, as the reason for the low production rate of oil shale in the highly mechanised shale mine—with claims that miners were working actively for as little as four hours in an eight-hour shift—that in turn being the cause of the works' eventual fate. Others denied even the existence of a 'darg' and of communist-led unions at Glen Davis, blaming instead the state of the mining equipment and the management for the closure.
The closure of the works loomed as a personal financial catastrophe for those who had built or bought houses on land in the township. The Commonwealth Government agreed to compensation that softened the blow, and the unions agreed to allow the industrial plant to be disassembled. Beginning in early 1953, much of the movable equipment and other salvageable items were put on sale at auction. The population soon drifted away—dwindling from around 2,000, at its peak, to only 195 by late 1954—and some buildings in the town were relocated, leaving Glen Davis close to a ghost town. The immovable parts of the plant became ruins.
Although the works had been intended as a means of securing local petrol production, it had provided only a tiny portion of annual petrol consumption in Australia, which by 1952 was 638-million imperial gallons per year.
Deposits and resources
Two seams of oil shale were mined at Glen Davis. The main seam was torbanite and was mined between 5 and 2 feet in thickness. Lying immediately above the 'main seam' was a layer of white clay—6 inches to 2 feet thick—and above that a seam of semi-carbonaceous shale, the 'top' or 'secondary' seam.When assayed, the shale from the richer 'main seam' averaged 50% oil—containing over per long ton—while the 'top' or 'secondary' seam contained only 8.5% oil, or just over 20 imperial gallons per long ton. The mixed shale from both seams averaged 20% oil or about per long ton. The deposit held a total of 2000-million imperial gallons of oil. Although the secondary seam shale reduced the oil content in the mined shale, mining both seams together allowed mechanised mining methods to be used.
There was an independent coal mine nearby that supplied the works with the coal that it used as a fuel for its processes.
The rainfall at Glen Davis was 16 to 18 inches per year and, in dry times, surface water at Glen Davies was insufficient. Bores were put down but the water needed treatment. Water was a constraint on production in the early years. From March 1946, water was supplied to the works, from the Oberon Dam on the Fish River, by a 105 km long pipeline. In 1949, reticulated water was supplied to the township. Yet, during the heavy rains of June 1949, the works was affected by the flooding of the nearby Capertee River and there was more flooding during 1950.
Description
The mining and shale oil extraction complex was located in Gindantherie, Goolloinboin, Barton, Glen Alice, and Capertee parishes of Cook and Hunter counties. The mine used bord-and-pillar mining techniques, and employed 170 miners. The shale was crushed by a Pennsylvania single-roll type crusher and was then conveyed into the retorts.The company planned to use two tunnel ovens, each with a daily capacity of 336 tons, designed by AS Franz Krull of Estonia and Lurgi AG of Germany, similar to those used by some oil shale industries in Estonia. However, for economic reasons, it was decided in March 1939 to instead use a technology that had been employed in the closed Newnes Shale Oil Works, and 64 modified Pumpherston retorts were transferred from Newnes. Other equipment was imported from the United States, including a second bench of 44 retorts added in 1946. Retorts were heated by coal obtained from nearby coal mines. The rate of recovery of the retorts was 82% of the assayed oil content as crude oil.
The crude shale oil was refined to make petrol, with the crude oil yielding a little over 50% petrol.
The petrol was pumped through a long pipeline to storage tanks at Newnes Junction, from where it was transported by rail. There were two storage tanks at Newnes Junction, each with a capacity or 500,000 gallons. The pipeline was made of 3-inch diameter steel pipe. The first part of the pipeline was laid through chasms and across a saddle between the works and the Wolgan Valley. The next section of the pipeline, in part, followed the former route of the Wolgan Valley Railway but deviated from that route—following parts of the modern-day Pagoda Track and the Old Coach Road—to shorten its length. It was intended originally to construct another—gravity fed—pipeline from Newnes Junction to Blacktown, where National Oil Proprietary Ltd. had land for a distribution centre, but this section of the pipeline was never built.
The works had its own brickworks and power station.