Pipe-lines Could Displace Hired Fuel Tanker Fleets
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BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
THE driving of the first pile on the 4S-acre site of the Shell-Mex and B.P. oil distribution centre at Partington, near Manchester, on Monday, could be "the writing on the wall" for the road tanker industry. Partington, which is expected to be in operation early next year, will be the company's first distribution centre to be entirely supplied by pipe-line.
Petroleum products will be pumped 23 miles from Stanlow Refinery, near Chester, by underground pipe-lines taking oil to Manchester's doorstep.
The two pipe-lines to the installation, one for light oils and the second for fuel oil, are expected to cost over flm. The centre will take over distribution from the Eccles depot at present fed by water and road from Startlow.
It will use the latest push-button operating techniques to ensure a smooth flow of products into and out of storage. Petroleum products will be delivered by road tanker from Partington into a 1,200-sq.-mile area of Lancashire, Cheshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire.
The installation will be an important link in Shell-Mex and B.P.'s reorganized distribution system, which uses as its focal points the six major refineries in Britain of the Shell and British Petroleum groups.
The capacity of these refineries has increakd ten-fold since the war, and in the past nine years Shell-Mex and B.P. have carried out a nationwide programme of building new installations and depots, enlarging and modernizing others and closing a number of old and inadequate premises.
These storage points are supplied from the Shell and British Petroleum refineries by coastal tankers, rail tank cars or road wagons. The new installation will be the first commercial multi-product storage and distribution point in Britain to be fed solely by pipe-line.
The supply to Manchester and the north-west direct by pipe-line may be the prelude to the provision of similar facilities for the main centres of population in the British Isles, and could well mean the gradual displacement of the hired tanker fleets operated by the major petrol companies.