SHELL NEDERLAND RAFFINADERIJ B.V.

77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:27
Pagina 3
S H E L L N E D E R L A N D R A F F I N A D E R I J B . V.
77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:27
Pagina 4
Company / Shell Pernis is one of the Netherlands’ largest industrial complexes,
located in the Rijnmond area in the Municipality of Rotterdam.
Shell Pernis consists first and foremost of two independent operating companies
of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group: Shell Nederland Raffinaderij B.V. (oil refining)
and Shell Nederland Chemie B.V. (chemicals). Various other chemical
companies formerly owned by Shell are also located on the site. These were
divested to new owners at the end of the twentieth century. This brochure refers
to the refinery as SNR, to the chemical operations as SNC and to the entire
industrial complex comprising the Shell and third-party companies as Shell
Pernis. An essential part of the refinery, although located some twenty
kilometres from the plants, is the Shell Europoort terminal for the offloading,
storage and transfer of crude oil and naphtha.
Company
Many oil products
leave Pernis by
inland waterway.
The Royal Dutch/Shell Group has operating companies in
around 140 countries, employs more than 110,000 people
and is active in the fields of petroleum, (liquefied) natural
gas, petrochemicals, electricity and sustainable energy.
This makes it an energy company in the very broadest
sense of the word.
The Royal Dutch/Shell Group was formed in 1907 as the
result of an alliance between Royal Dutch Petroleum
Company and The Shell Transport and Trading Company
Limited. The company is 60% Dutch-owned and 40%
British-owned.
History
An installation to process crude petroleum from
Sumatra was built on Rotterdam’s Sluisjesdijk in 1902.
The installation underwent vigorous expansion until it was
dismantled in the 1930s. Shell had decided to build a new
refinery outside the city on a site alongside the First
Petroleum Dock.
Chemical operations commenced in 1949 when one plant
was built to produce liquid synthetic detergent and another
to produce PVC. The demand for chemical products
continued to grow in the 1960s and 1970s. At the
beginning of the 1970s a new location was constructed at
Moerdijk, thirty-five kilometres southeast of Pernis, as
there was no more room for the Pernis site to expand.
Several pipelines interconnect the Moerdijk and Pernis
sites.
Oil tankers increased in size during the 1950s, which
necessitated the development of a special terminal further
west in the new Europoort area. From 1960 onwards, the
very largest oil tankers from the Middle East were able to
dock there and unload their cargoes.
77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:27
Pagina 5
Refinery / SNR is one of the world’s largest refineries. The refinery converts
crude oil into other products. These might be end products such as gasoline
(petrol), or semi-finished products which require further processing. There are
two reasons why the Pernis refinery is special. It can process many different
types of crude oil, light and very heavy types alike. And this makes it flexible
and capable of capitalizing on market changes. In addition, the refinery is
equipped to produce all kinds of special products. In terms of volume, for
example, fuels such as gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, LPG and fuel oil are the
most important, followed by naphtha, the raw material for all kinds of
petrochemical products. Other products are lubricants, steam, electricity and
sulphur.
Roughly 50% of the products are exported, mainly to Germany.
The refinery processes approximately twenty million tonnes of crude oil each
year. This oil is supplied via underground pipelines from Shell Europoort, where
the huge tanks containing crude oil are located.
Refinery
The crude oil refining
process starts in these
furnaces.
Refining processes
Crude oil is a mixture of hundreds of different
compounds. Its composition strongly depends on where in
the world the oil was extracted, but crude oil can seldom
be used as an end product. Several processes must be used
to refine it.
The first process is distillation. The crude oil is heated in
a closed system and partially vaporizes. The vapour rises
in a distilling column and gradually cools. This means that
different products condense at different levels, which
makes it possible to initially separate various products.
That fraction of the oil that does not vaporize, the residue,
is further processed by means of conversion processes: its
molecular structures are altered. Cracking is an effective
process for ‘chopping’ the large molecules in the residue
into smaller ones, which make better fuels. Various
cracking processes are available, all of which involve high
temperatures. Other techniques that may be used in
conjunction with the cracking process include pressurizing,
adding hydrogen and introducing a catalyst to speed up
the reactions. Other conversion processes include
alkylation and reforming, particularly for the production
of high-grade gasoline components.
Despite advanced
automation, the
eyes and ears of the
process operator are
still indispensable.
A third process that has become increasingly important
with time is desulphurization. Crude oil always contains
sulphur, usually between 0.5 and 3 per cent. But highgrade fuels such as gasoline and diesel fuel may not
contain more than 0.005 per cent sulphur and in future
this figure will be as low as 0.001 per cent. Sulphur can
be removed from the products with the aid of hydrogen,
catalysts and a considerable amount of energy. Shell does
not use the sulphur itself but sells it on to fertilizer
factories and other users.
Finally, the many products also have to be blended to
obtain marketable end products of the right quality. Some
products are piped elsewhere straightaway while others
are held in on-site storage tanks before being delivered to
the customer.
77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:28
Pagina 6
The industrial complex
At the end of 1998, Shell announced that it would be
thoroughly restructuring its global chemical activities. The
broad range of products has been drastically reduced since
then. Today’s basic activities involve the bulk supply of
‘close to the cracker’ petrochemical products. For the
Pernis site, this meant that more than 60 per cent of
SNC’s production facilities had to be sold off. This was
completed over a period of more than three years.
The new owners reached agreements with SNR and SNC,
initially of course about whether or not to re-employ the
Shell personnel and if so under what terms. A study was
conducted to find out what products and services could
continue to be provided by SNR and/or SNC. The most
important product that SNR supplies to SNC is naphtha
for the cracker in Moerdijk, which operates completely
differently from most oil crackers.
For more information, please see the brochure that
describes SNC’s activities.
Energy for Shell Pernis
A major proportion of the energy for the refinery and
the chemical plants comes from two combined heat and
power stations. These generate both heat (steam) and
power (electricity) simultaneously. Various fuels can be
used, such as heavy fuel oil, natural gas and synthesis gas,
a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that itself is
produced via the gasification of the heaviest residue.
Co-generation of heat and power is a very efficient method
of generating energy.
The amount of electricity generated at Shell Pernis is
almost always higher than the plants’ requirements.
Surplus power is fed into the public electricity grid.
A large amount of process heat for the plants is generated
directly in furnaces by firing refinery oil products or gas,
or natural gas. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, many
investments were made in equipment that enables the
waste heat from one process to be used in a subsequent
process. However, a great deal of heat still ends up in the
atmosphere or, via cooling water, in the waterways. Shell
is actively seeking methods to use this waste heat off-site
too, but this of course depends on the cooperation of third
parties such as government authorities and utility
companies.
77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:28
Pagina 7
OBJECTIVE
Shell companies aspire to achieve world-class performance. They also aim to be good employers in order to earn and
retain their licence to operate.
Shell acknowledges its responsibility both to its own employees and to the immediate environment within which every
Shell company operates. Sustainable development is key to this, and must be achieved through the interplay of
economic development (growth), care for nature and the environment and corporate social responsibility. The policy
principles that ensue from this are taken into consideration in all decisions regarding investments and company
activities. The objective is the ongoing development of new improved techniques and processes.
V
b
in
h
Health, Safety, Well-being and the Environment
The aspects of health, safety, well-being and the
environment take a central role throughout operational
management. The people working in Pernis and Europoort
must be able to do so safely. And people living in the
vicinity and our customers must also be confident that
they will not suffer any harmful consequences from SNR’s
activities and products. The company has a clear policy,
with clearly defined procedures and guidelines to
meet the strict criteria for health, safety, well-being
and the environment. Its norms and values demand full
compliance with health, safety, well-being and
environment rules, exemplary leadership and teamwork
on the part of employees, and customer-focus and good
relations with business partners, government and local
residents.
The results relating to health, safety, well-being and the
environment are communicated each year in a public
report. More information about this is available on our
website, as well as the full text of the most recent annual
report.
77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:28
Pagina 8
Flaring for safety / Flares are a clearly visible feature of the petrochemical
industry. Anyone driving through the port of Rotterdam at night will see several
flares: tall stacks topped by a permanent flame. These flares are part of the
safety system. Most of the plants on Shell’s Pernis site are connected to them.
If the pressure in a particular plants exceeds a set limit, the system activates
automatically. The plant is rapidly depressurized and the gaseous product is
discharged to the flare stack where it is safely burned. Large flames can often
be seen for relatively short periods.
Certain maintenance work may also necessitate the use of the flaring systems.
Flaring for safety
Impermeable
paving limits the
consequences of
any leakage.
Visual inspection
by the operator
in the modern
hydrocracker.
Pernis discharges large volumes of treated
process and cooling water.
Cleaner products
The European Parliament has drawn up criteria for
increasingly cleaner oil products. In practice this means
that gasoline and diesel fuel are only permitted to contain
very small amounts of sulphur. The maximum sulphur
content of diesel fuel is to be reduced over ten years from
350 ppm (parts per million) to 10 ppm by 2010. This will
enable the automobile industry to fit improved engines
(more economical and with fewer emissions) in their
vehicles.
To make this possible, all refineries, including SNR, will
be obliged to make further changes to their plants to
remove even more sulphur from their products. This will
mean investments of well in excess of a hundred million
euros for SNR alone.
When barges are loaded, the
vapours released are recovered and
condensed to reduce the
environmental impact.
Flaring system at Pernis.
Other facilities
A network providing water for fire-fighting is
installed in and around the plants and other units and
offices. All the plants are also connected to sewer systems.
Wastewater and process water from the various plants are
treated before being discharged onto the surface water.
Two treatment units are available for this purpose.
The production processes generate a great deal of heat
and this is recycled internally wherever possible. However,
some has to be discharged as waste heat in the cooling
water, which is drawn from the Oude Maas and Nieuwe
Maas rivers.
The vast majority of the raw materials and finished
products are both delivered on site and shipped off-site by
pipeline and waterway, in roughly the same volumes.
Relatively small volumes of LPG and aviation fuel are
transported by road tankers.
Specially equipped storage sites allow the temporary
storage of packaged waste products before they are
removed to authorized treatment and disposal sites.
77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:28
Pagina 1
The Shell Pernis Residential Advisory Board / The Shell Pernis Residential
Advisory Board was set up as an experiment in 1998. The aim was to improve
the quality of life in the Rijnmond area. In the Residential Advisory Board,
people living in the vicinity of Shell Pernis consult with company management
about all kinds of issues confronting them either directly or indirectly as
neighbours, particularly any nuisance they may have experienced, and
environmental and safety aspects. It is not the intention for the Residential
Advisory Board to take over the tasks of official authorities with regard to
permits, rules and regulations.
Shell Pernis Residential Advisory Board
As suggested by the Shell Pernis Residential
Advisory Board, several storage tanks have
been attractively painted.
The Residential Advisory Board comprises independent
members from the surrounding towns of Pernis, Hoogvliet,
Albrandswaard, Spijkenisse, Vlaardingen and Schiedam.
Partly in response to a Board initiative, Shell has taken
measures that have drastically reduced the number of port
incidents and the frequency of flaring. Moreover, the
Residential Advisory Board drew Shell’s attention to the
unsightly appearance of the older parts of the Pernis
complex. An improvement programme has been initiated
here too, including the painting of eye-catching motifs on
storage tanks.
Evaluation of the Residential Advisory Board experiment
demonstrated that there was a clear basis for it to
continue its activities. The Board’s experience and
learnings were collected and published in 2002 in a
bilingual brochure titled ‘Model for a Residential Advisory
Board’. The brochure also recommends the steps to be
taken by other companies (or industrial estates) interested
in setting up such a consultative body.
Information about nuisance
Despite all the precautionary measures, incidents may
occasionally occur. This might cause a nuisance to people
both on and off-site, and beyond the perimeter fence
people may be inconvenienced by noxious odours, noise
and flaring. In addition to these incidents, maintenance
and other work may also constitute a nuisance. If it is
obvious that particular activities will cause a nuisance,
Shell Pernis informs the neighbourhood in advance.
Information is also provided as rapidly as possible when
incidents do occur. That is not always easy as it usually
takes some time before the causes have been traced and
appropriate measures taken. Shell Pernis does all it can to
alleviate people’s concerns by providing as much
information as it can as soon as it can. Obviously, we still
consider any incident to be one too many and therefore
give the highest priority to prevention.
77106_SNR_Engels
22-12-2003
15:28
Pagina 2
This is a publication of Shell Nederland Raffinaderij B.V.
Text: Public Affairs department
Design and production: Volcano Advertising
Photography: Ernst Bode
December 2003
Any questions?
You may still have questions and/or comments after reading this brochure. Please feel free to
contact the Public Affairs department, tel. +31 (0)10-4314127, fax +31 (0)10-4313982.
You can also respond via the website: www.shell.nl, or by e-mail to public-affairs-pernis@shell.com,
or in writing to:
Shell Nederland Raffinaderij B.V.
Public Affairs department
PO Box 3000
3190 GA Hoogvliet
The Netherlands
For information about Shell around the world, we recommend that you visit our website
www.shell.com
S H E L L N E D E R L A N D R A F F I N A D E R I J B . V.