Reference articles on history, science, culture and more
Encyclopedia

Strathcona Refinery

Canadian oil refinery owned by Imperial Oil

Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

The Strathcona Refinery is an oil refinery located in Strathcona County adjacent to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, owned by Imperial Oil. The refinery provides oil products, primarily gasoline, aviation fuel, diesel, lubricating oils, petroleum waxes, heavy fuel oil and asphalts.

The refinery was built in 1975 and replaced older refineries in Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, and Calgary.

A fire occurred at the refinery in 2007 that resulted it in temporarily operating at reduced capacity.

01Avgas contamination

On February 15, 2018 Imperial Oil Limited the Canadian subsidiary of U.S. petroleum company ExxonMobil and sole producer of Avgas in Canada announced that it had notified Transport Canada that it was immediately ceasing all production of AVGas produced at the Strathcona Refinery due to quality issues, specifically that "the product quality issue may cause interference with on-board fuel gauge sensors of aircraft using avgas." Imperial also sent out warnings to airport FBOs about the quality issues and ordered that all sales of Avgas since December 28, 2017 be stopped and the fuel in question be quarantined until Imperial can make arrangements to have the fuel returned to the refinery. As a result many small aircraft have been left stranded at airports across Canada until fuel supplies from neighboring U.S. can be delivered.

02Refinery units

Refinery unit capacities as of 2018

Unit Capacity in bpcd
Atmospheric Distillation Unit 189,000
Vacuum Distillation Unit 69,000
FCC Unit 64,500
Naphtha Reformer 21,000
Gasoline Desulphurization Hydrotreater 30,500
ULSD Hydrotreater 78,500
Other Hydrotrreating 52,000
Alkylation 15,500
C4 Isomerization 6,500
H2 SMR Production mmscf/d 20.0
Lubes 3,000
Sulfur mt/d 49
Watch videos about Strathcona RefineryExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article Strathcona Refinery, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

Fathomly is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Wikimedia Foundation. Spotted a problem? Tell us.