Established in 1889, we have come a long way from our humble beginnings. We have developed into the fifth largest refinery in the USA. Below we detail our amazing journey.
May 1889:
Construction of the refinery begins on 235 acres of land.
November 1890:
The first shipment of finished petroleum product, 125 tank cars of kerosene, is shipped from the refinery. Note: Gasoline was considered a waste product and was often discarded.
January 1913:
New "thermal cracking" stills begin operation at Whiting. These historically significant units, for the first time ever, used pressure and high temperature to cause a chemical change that increased the gasoline yield from crude oil. Initial production was 8,000 gallons per day.
During World War I:
Standard Oil Company licenses its thermal cracking process to the rest of the industry to increase gasoline production for the war effort. Result: 12 million barrels of gasoline in 1918 vs. 2 million in 1914.
1923:
Research at Whiting leads to the discovery that adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline would remove power-robbing "knock" from car engines.
1941:
Research at Whiting leads to the discovery of a process that made high-grade aviation fuel out of low-octane naphtha. The discovery came just four days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. During the war, Whiting researchers also developed a new all-weather heavy-duty motor oil.
1959:
Construction is completed on the second, and larger, of the two crude oil pipe stills. The new unit could distill 140,000 barrels of crude oil per day. more than twice the size of the pipe still built only three years earlier. Today the No. 12 Pipe Still, considered the heart of the refining operation, is capable of distilling more than 250,000 barrels of crude per day.
1969:
Whiting becomes the first refinery in the petroleum industry to add a third (tertiary) stage to its water treatment facility. (Large amounts of water are used in the refinery to help remove impurities from the product stream and to cool the product as it moves from one process to the next.) The tertiary stage injects air into the water to bring the impurities to the surface where they are collected and removed.
1972:
Whiting's No. 4 Ultraformer begins operation. Ultraforming is a process whereby the molecules of the gasoline product are "reformed" to produce a high-octane gasoline product containing no lead.
June 1977:
Whiting establishes an all-time production record for the refinery by processing 504,000 barrels of crude oil in a 24-hour period.
1987:
Whiting's Total Isomerization Process unit begins operation. The Isomerization Unit upgrades lower octane light naphtha by rearranging its molecular structure. As a result, higher octane products are attained, some by at least 15 octane numbers.
1993:
DDU, Distillate Desulfurizer Unit, is built to provide low sulfur diesel fuels. This process removes the sulfur down to the 0.05 weight % the EPA now requires for highway diesel fuels. Our older Desulfurization Unit can only remove sulfur down to the 0.3 weight % limit for off-highway uses. These higher sulfur diesels are still used for agricultural use.
1999:
Whiting becomes part of the newly merged BP Amoco Corporation. BP Amoco introduces new cleaner premium gasoline.
2001:
Whiting Clean Energy Project - A project between Primary Energy of Merrillville, IN and BP Amoco which will generate 525 MW of electric power--six times as much power as the refinery currently manages and will also be capable of producing high-pressure steam for either refinery use or additional power generation. It will reduce the refinery's incremental power and steam costs by 15-20%.
Established in 1889, we have come a long way from our humble beginnings. We have developed into the fifth largest refinery in the USA. Below we detail our amazing journey.
