Tank Farm

We had seen this plant be active off and on for over 4 years before we decided to try out access since the place was very derelict. As abandoned as the place looked, it was attached to a building which exhibited flurries of activity from time to time.  Generally when you look at images on this website, you get the impression and mood of a location, but the one thing you never get are certain cues, in this case, the smell. This location smelled really, really bad. The stench seemed to linger in the inner yard like a heavy cloud that shortened our stay considerably. Once inside, no one could see you. There were no windows in the perimeter buildings facing inwards so you could walk around without worrying about being seen by some nosey busy body. One of the holding tanks had a huge hole 7 M/20 ft high by 7 M wide that had been cut with welding torches exposing it’s interior. Inside it looked like there was a crude attempt at cleaning up the mysterious petro-chemical sludge by pouring sawdust into the tank.

This company started out as a waste management facility handling waste materials from the petroleum industry. The site was operated by Canadian oil, which was a subsidiary of Shell Oil Company. It was involved in re-refining until 1999 when it was revamped to operate a full service waste management facility. Apparently the new company inherited a huge quantity of waste that could not be processed (several million liters). It operates today as a liquid waste facility handing all types of industrial waste. We certainly didn’t feel comfortable entering such a place because we did not know what could be inside. After about an hour we decided to leave as we were beginning to feel the effects of the fumes from the waste even though we were outside.

Photos by Kathy and Jan.

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