Glen Davis Shale Oil Works
[2]The shale oil industry at Glen Davis was developed for production of shale oil for national defence purposes,[3] although the basis of this project was the 1934 report of the Newnes Investigation Committee, which looked at ways to decrease the number of unemployed miners in the region.
[4] A public notice in the Commonwealth of Australia Gazette, on 28 May 1936, invited offers for developing the oil industry in the Glen Davis area.
It became apparent that the estimate of cost provided in the Newnes Investigation Committee's report was inadequate, as the total expenditure on the plant reached £1,300,000.
George Davis was knighted in 1941, for his contribution to the war effort, but the Commonwealth Government took over the board and appointed new management in December 1941.
[17] That commitment to retort design was likely based on advice given to George Davis by John Fell, who had run the Newnes oil extraction operations from 1914 to 1923,[18] but the failure to even try the Renco retort, which had been relocated at great cost, remains one of the mysteries of the Glen Davis operation.
After expansion of the Glen Davis plant in 1946—to a nominal capacity of 10,000,000 imperial gallons (45,000,000 L; 12,000,000 US gal) of petrol per year—a shortage of mined shale constrained its output.
Productivity was poor and the works' losses were only limited by a petrol excise rebate on the oil that it produced.
Securing sufficient skilled labour was a problem, due to the isolated location of Glen Davis.
However, in 1948, a report by Gordon Sellers of the Joint Coal Board revealed that the remaining shale reserves at Glen Davis were insufficient to support an expansion.
Had the plant achieved even half of its design throughput in 1951, it would have been profitable but, by the end of 1950, the accumulated losses already totalled 84% of capital and advances.
[20] To the end, the continuing inability to mine sufficient shale to feed the retorts was the cause of the works' losses.
[33] The miner's resistance to the Poles' working in the mine, seems to have been based on a perception of their political views rather than their ethnicity.
[36][37][38][21][39] Others denied even the existence of a 'darg' and of communist-led unions at Glen Davis, blaming instead the state of the mining equipment and the management for the closure.
[15][41][42] The closure of the works loomed as a personal financial catastrophe for those who had built or bought houses on land in the township.
From March 1946, water was supplied to the works, from the Oberon Dam on the Fish River, by a 105 km long pipeline.
This is a rare instance of water from the Murray-Darling catchment being diverted to a location that is east of the Great Dividing Range.
[54] The 55,000 acres (22,000 ha) mining and shale oil extraction complex was located in Gindantherie, Goolloinboin, Barton, Glen Alice, and Capertee parishes of Cook and Hunter counties.
The petrol was pumped, under high pressure, through a 32-mile (51 km) long pipeline to storage tanks at Newnes Junction, from where it was transported by rail.
[64] It was intended originally to construct another—gravity fed—pipeline from Newnes Junction to Blacktown, where National Oil Proprietary Ltd. had land for a distribution centre,[65][66] but this section of the pipeline was never built.
