Montreal East Refinery (Shell Canada)
The Montreal East Refinery was an oil refinery located in Montreal East and formerly Shell Canada's largest refinery. In October 2010, refinery operations permanently ceased and the facility was subsequently converted into a storage terminal.
History
The defunct refinery, the second owned by Shell in Canada, opened on 24 March 1933. It began with three units; the distillation unit, a topping unit, and cracking catalytic unit. In 1947 it was expanded with the building of the alkylation and catalytic cracking refining units, and the refining capacity of was increased. From 1947 to 1960, the isomerisation, catalytic reforming, chemicals plants were built and the refining capacity was further increased. During 2002 to 2008, desulphuration units were built and the refining capacity was upgraded to its highest level.| Year | Capacity |
| 1933 | 5,000 |
| 1947 | 40,000 |
| 1951 | 55,000 |
| 1956 | 75,000 |
| 1965 | 124,000 |
| 2003 | 129,000 |
| 2005 | 133,000 |
| 2007 | 161,000 |
On January 7, 2010 Shell Canada announced closing the refinery and converting it to a fuel terminal. On June 4, 2010, following the unsuccessful attempts to find a buyer to take over the plant, Shell Canada announced its plans to move forward to downgrade the refinery into a terminal. The conversion commenced in September 2010, with it permanently ceasing operations as a refinery in October 2010. Approximately 800 jobs were lost.
Description
The refinery consisted of two refining units with capacities of and. It had alkylation, hydro-cracking, reforming catalytic, cracking catalytic, thermal catalytic, isomerisation, and desulphiration units. Its processing capacities included:- of visbreaking
- of fluid catalytic cracking
- of semi-regenerative catalytic reforming
- of hydrocracking for distillate upgrading
- of catalytic hydrotreating for cat reformer feeds
- of hydrotreating for kerosene/jet desulfurization
- of API Group I base oil
- of unfinished wax. The refinery had 154 oil tanks and more than 450 workers.