NOTES FROM THE FIELD

THE LITTLEST REFINERY

In Wyoming a tiny installation reveals the other side of an industry built on mass production
BY FREDERIC D. SCHWARZ

AS THIS ISSUE’S STORY on catalytic cracking shows, the triumph of America’s oilrefining industry in the twentieth century was based on two things: discovering clever new processes and then scaling them up to produce Yuige quantities. Yet alongside the mammoth refineries that pumped out high-octane gasoline to defeat the Axis, there were hundreds of small units distilling kerosene and heating oil for local communities, just as in the industry’s pioneer days. In isolated areas, especially those near oil fields, it often was cheaper to refine and distribute crude oil locally than to ship it to a major company’s facility.

One such town was Lusk, Wyoming. Lusk was a small ranching community until 1918, when oil was discovered near Lance Creek, about 20 miles away. A pipeline carried Lance Creek crude to the railhead at Lusk, where it was loaded into tank cars. At its peak in the early 1920s, Lusk’s population boomed to 10,000.

With the coming of the Depression, however, the Wyoming oil industry slumped. In 1933 Jim Hoblit and Roy Chamberlain, two employees of the Ohio Oil Company (a Lance Creek operator) who had been put on half time, opened their own plant in Lusk and called it C&H Refinery. The main building was a tin shack, 28 by 50 feet, containing a pair of stills whose outer cases had been made in the 185Os by the Erie City Iron Works, in Pennsylvania. The plucky little refinery, with a capacity of 190 barrels per day, managed to stay in business through depression, war, and the vicissitudes of the oil industry before closing for good in 1978. Then its final owner, Joe Chamberlain (no relation to Roy), started looking for someone to sell it to.

Surprisingly, the market for an outdated refinery one-thousandth the size of a modern one proved quite limited. Not until the arrival of the Internet could a buyer be found, and he was 12,000 miles away, in Islamabad, Pakistan. One day in 1998 Zahir Khalid, a businessman and former Pakistani air force fighter pilot, saw a sale notice for the C&H Refinery online. On a whim, and despite having no experience in anything remotely connected with oil refining, he responded. Within a few weeks he found himself in Lusk, viewing the rusty, overgrown site with dismay. Nonetheless, he made an offer, and as he later wrote, “the owner demanded immediate cash, probably because he did not believe that I was serious” (presumably thinking Khalid had traveled from Pakistan to Wyoming just for the hell of it). Khalid quickly arranged for the necessary financing, and a day later he was in the oil business.

Though the refinery was small, it was sophisticated. A honeycomb of pipes passed through the stills carrying superheated steam. These pipes heated the crude oil and boiled off successive fractions: water, naphtha, kerosene, and diesel. Steamdriven pumps kept the oil and distillation products circulating. The entire plant was built to run without electricity.

When Khalid bought the refinery, it was in the shape one would expect after 20 years of exposure to the elements. Working mostly from Pakistan, he led a team of volunteers and technical specialists in cleaning the site (including inside the boilers, a must for getting the refinery certified by environmental agencies) and restoring the machinery to working order. In June 2000 he put the plant through its first production run in two decades, just to show that it could be done (he has no plans to operate it as a going concern).

Since then the energetic Khalid has gotten the Lusk unit certified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s smallest refinery and secured its listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Although Khalid has achieved wonders in restoring the C&H Refinery to working condition, his personal resources have been exhausted, and keeping it from further decay is another, ongoing struggle. A visit this fall left Khalid alarmed at the devastation wrought by the area’s fierce weather. Students and faculty from the University of Wyoming hope to document the site, but much more time and money will be needed to ensure its safety in the long term. Anyone interested in helping preserve this monument to the oil industry’s numerous small operators can e-mail Khalid at stak@isb. compol.com or fax him at 011-925-128-1005.

BACK & OPERATING

After nearly two years, Baltimore’s storm-damaged B&O Railroad Museum is reopening

ON FEBRUARY 16, 2003, A BLIZZARD buried the East Coast in up to two feet of snow. In most places life was disrupted for a few days with little lasting damage, but in Baltimore at least one building took a catastrophic hit: the B&O Railroad Museum, which occupied a roundhouse built in 1884 by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, America’s oldest. Half the museum’s roof collapsed, sending down snow, steel ribs, and roofing materials. It was the worst natural disaster ever to strike an American museum.

The storm damaged artifacts ranging from nineteenth-century locomotives to an official B&O teabag, circa 1950. In an exceptionally precise estimate, officials placed the cost of recovery at $29,573,666, about two-thirds of which was covered by insurance.

The lack of shelter while the roof was being rebuilt caused additional problems, such as flooding and consequent damage to the turntable mechanism. Further complications arose in bringing the rebuilt roundhouse (actually a 22-sided structure 235 feet across and 123 feet tall) into compliance with modern standards on such matters as handicapped access, lightning protection, and lead-paint abatement.

For all the damage that occurred, the museum has been restored remarkably fast. A month after the collapse, what remained of the roof had been stabilized. By the end of June 2003, 250 tons of rubble had been cleared out of the roundhouse, along with all the artifacts except some large locomotives and rolling stock. Meanwhile, the slow process of restoring damaged locomotives and cars began, both on-site and elsewhere. The museum’s staff plans to build a new restoration facility to continue the work, which is expected to last six years.

Scaffolding and supports were set up, and new roof trusses—of steel, instead of the original wrought iron, to meet building codes—were installed to replace the collapsed ones. Then the remaining trusses, which were in a “pre-failure condition,” were replaced as well. Further inspection revealed that the upper, or clerestory, roof also needed renovation to meet code requirements.

By Thanksgiving the lower roof had been entirely restored, and the turntable deck had been removed to permit repairs to the underlying mechanism. By the storm’s first anniversary enough progress had been made to announce that the museum would reopen on November 13 of this year.

As the renovation continues, so does the need for money. The public’s response has been gratifying, but the museum still needs about $3.5 million more, and all contributions are welcome. To make a donation or find out how repairs are progressing, see the museum’s Web site at www.borail.org.

While in Baltimore, technology fans will also want to visit the Baltimore Museum of Industry, among whose many fascinating holdings is the former Mount Vernon Museum of Incandescent Lighting—a collection of especial interest for this fall’s 125th anniversary of Edison’s electric light. The Mount Vernon collection was accumulated by a Maryland dentist named Hugh F. Hicks over more than 70 years until his death in 2002. A few hundred of the most interesting or important bulbs are on display, but the complete collection contains more than 50,000, including some very early Edison examples. For information on the museum, see www.thebmi.org.