The Lexington Advertiser

Groundbreaking For SO Refinery Held Today
At Pascagoula; Pres. W. C. Smith Attends

Ground-breaking ceremonies for Standard Oil Company (Kentucky) new 100,000 barrels-per-day refinery were held in Pascagoula today, with W. C. Smith, company president, and Governor Ross Barnett participating.

Planning and design work on the 2,700-acre facility in the Bayou Cassotte Industrial Area five miles east of Pascagoula is already well under way, Smith said. and the first contract. for clearing the site, already has been awarded.

One of the features of the refinery, Mississippi's largest, is an 18,000 barrels-per-day Isocracker. Announced two years ago by California Research Corporation, a subsidiary. of KYSO's parent company, Standard Oil Company of California the Isocracking process is capable of making 103 barrels of 103-octane gasoline out of 100 barrels of fuel oil stock The process is considered a major scientific "break-through" by Calresearch, which has offered it to other U. S. foreign oil companies under license.

KYSO's Pascagoula operation will produce a full range of petroleum products for the company's present five-state market.

The refinery personnel will be drawn as much as possible from local population, Smith indicated.

Work is also expected to be- gin soon on improving a seven-mile-long channel to the Bayou Cassotte area from the Gulf of Mexico to permit passage of tank ships up to 33,000 tons in size. The tankers will be one of the refinery's main lines of dis- tribution to tidewater terminals and bulk plants throughout the KYSO marketing area.

Pascagoula's principal source of crude oil will be extensive offshore and onshore oil fields operated by its affiliate, The California Company Divison of California Oil Company. another Standard of California subsi- diary.

The KYSO affiliate has been particularly active in the Gulf Coast offshore fields. in which it pioneered exploration more than 10 years ago. Production from these fields during 1960 increased to 55.000 barrels a day, approximately one-fourth of the industry's total produc- tion from this source.

The crude oil will flow through a proposed new 104- mile pipe line to be built by a new KYSO subsidiary, the Cal- Ky Pipe Line Company, from Ostrica, Louisiana, to Pascagou- la. Present plans also call for the refinery to be tied into the Plantation Pipe Line. a products carrier. in which KYSO has a part interest. The Plantation Pipe Line extends from Louisi- ana to the Carolinas, with a lateral into Tennessee.

"By the time the refinery is completed about the middle of 1963, we expect that these pipe line systems. coupled with our tanker operation. will play a substantial role in development of new markets adjoining our present area," Smith concluded.