6.45 AM

The alarm goes off. Have a quick read of today’s news on my phone and take a shower. Have breakfast and jump in the car.

7.15 AM

Drive down the coast through Fremantle and Kwinana to get to BP’s Kwinana Refinery.

8.00 AM

Arrive at Kwinana Refinery and check out the flares on the way in to see if we have any excess gas. Kwinana is Australia’s largest crude oil refinery with a refining capacity of 152,000 barrels per day. Commissioned in 1955, it lies 35km South of Perth in the Kwinana Industrial Park. At 250 hectares, the refinery is 21 times the size of the WACA stadium.

8.15 AM

Check overnight refinery activity. The refinery is a 24-hour facility so once I get to my desk I check out how the refinery has run overnight and look for any deviations from usual production. As LPG and Natural Gas Scheduler, I am most interested in any changes to these trends. I run the stock progression on LPG storage and make notes of any adjustments needed in production as I formulate the refinery’s LPG plan for the day.

9.15 AM

Grab a morning coffee with my team.

9.30 AM

First meeting of the day is with the Production and Optimisation team to discuss the refinery’s position as a whole; we process up to three types of crude oil and produce up to 10 products at any one time. We discuss any overnight or upcoming process unit changes, limitations, or outages that will impact production or quality for all products including LPG.

10.30 AM

I get onto organising our natural gas plan. The refinery burns natural gas to produce the heat energy required to run various process units, and it needs to be imported via pipeline from various WA gas reservoirs and storage facilities. I call our natural gas supplier to purchase the gas I need for the day. I schedule the gas in the WA pipeline to reach the Kwinana exit point.

12.00 PM

Lunch in the canteen with the other graduates and summer interns; there are 12 of us in total over the summer.

12.45 PM

I grab my safety gear and make my way to Kwinana Jetty at the west end of the refinery. BP provides ongoing training to its graduates and we have the opportunity to learn about all areas of the refinery - today we’re doing a site-specific tour of our jetty facilities. This includes a tour of the crude ship that is discharging crude oil taken from the Middle East. The BP owned “British Respect”, is off-loading enough crude to last four days of processing through our Crude Distillation Units.

2.30 PM

Video teleconference with our head office in Melbourne where I provide the weekly operations update and report any operational issues to the Supply team.

3.00 PM

Meet with my line manager to discuss any work updates, provide feedback and talk about any other issues.

3.30 PM

Catch up on emails from the day. I need to approve the invoices for natural gas purchases, reply to any LPG customers, check product quality CQs and keep an eye on any other issues relating to LPG and natural gas.

4.30 PM

The last task of the day is to provide an updated LPG production strategy to the overnight operators.

5.00 PM

Leave Kwinana and drive to football training.

7.30 PM

Arrive home and have dinner with my housemates. Time to chill out and watch whichever TV series I’m hooked on before I head to bed!