120 years of history In 1895, six years before the Federation of Australia, Vacuum Oil Company opened an office in Melbourne with a staff of three to sell mineral lubricants. On the first day of his first road trip as Vacuum’s first sales- man, David Clarke, an engineer from Yorkshire, England, sold his first barrel of Vacuum cylinder oil to the company’s first customer, Clarence United Gold Mining Company. Vacuum and its Mobil and ExxonMobil successors con- tinued to build on Clarke’s firsts over the next 120 years. Today, ExxonMobil in Australia has grown from that first sales office into a nationwide enterprise with investments of more than $20 billion. In powering Australia’s economy, it develops and pipes natural gas amounting to billions of cu- bic feet from the nation’s largest fields, produces and refines millions of barrels of oil, and stores and transports millions of gallons of fuel products every year. Undoubtedly, Clarke would be highly impressed.
ticated reservoir modeling ever attempted in the Gippsland Basin. Based on what we learned about the field, and with the value of gas increasing in Australia’s East Coast market, the venture moved forward with a gas-development plan for Turrum.” Safety excellence While Esso Australia, on behalf of its venture partners, has reliably supplied energy to the country for almost half a century, Owen notes that their success has been underscored by an excellent safety record. “We are an industry safety leader in Australia,” he says. “In fact, Esso Australia won the Australian Petroleum Produc- tion and Exploration Association Safety Excellence Award in 2013 and 2014 for best oil and gas industry safety performance. For our Bass Strait operations in particular, we went more than 12 months during those two years without a recordable injury onshore or offshore.” Over that time, the workforce, including both employees and contractors, produced approxi- mately 200 billion cubic feet of gas, 15 million barrels of oil and 14 million barrels of gas liquids. Achieving this involved: Moving more than 20,000 workers to and from offshore platforms on 4,000 helicopter flights.
Moving 2,250 tons of rig equip- ment between platforms. Cooking and serving 300,000 meals to offshore workers. Delivering 74,000 tons of sup- plies and equipment. Owen adds that it all comes down to one thing: “Our staff and contractors working to- gether to put safety at the center of everything we do.”
AUSTRAL IA
Tuna
Kipper
Snapper
West Tuna
Seahorse
Marlin B
Moonfish
Longford
Marlin A
Turrum
Whiting
Barracouta
Flounder
Fortescue
Halibut
Tarwhine
Cobia
Bream B
Dolphin
Mackerel
Bream A
Kingfish A
Blackback
Perch
West Kingfish
Kingfish B
Production from the Kipper, Tuna, Marlin and other Esso-operated facilities in Australia’s Bass Strait is transported by pipelines to the Longford complex in the state of Victoria.
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