LIMA — One of Lima’s largest employers will remain a global leader in the production of high-quality petroleum products for decades, members of the Lima Rotary Club were told Monday at the weekly club meeting.
Jerry Miller, vice president of U.S. Refining at Husky Energy’s Lima Refinery told Rotarians the Calgary, Alberta-based Husky Energy “spent a lot of money in the last couple of years … and in the next two years will spend a considerable amount of money to position Lima for decades” as a leader in state-of-the-art refining technology.
The Lima refinery produces some 25 percent of all the gasoline consumed in Ohio, Miller said, and he predicted that even a growing trend toward electric cars and other alternatives to petroleum products will have minimal effect on the company’s bottom line.
Asked by an audience members about the future of electric cars and their impact on the local refinery, the Husky executive was optimistic about the future of his industry.
“The battery may be our competitor, but can a battery drive a car from here to Pittsburgh?” Miller rhetorically asked his audience. “The technological revolution is across the spectrum, but we are confident that fossil fuels will be needed for the foreseeable future.”
He said OPEC — the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries — has become “largely irrelevant” as oil exploration is parts of the globe outside the Middle East have yielded new supplies of petroleum.
Crude oil flows via thousands of miles of pipeline to the Lima refinery from two sources: half from Canada and the remainder from the Gulf of Mexico. Ninety percent of the approximately 275,000 barrels of petroleum products produced daily by Husky is in the form of gasoline, jet airplane fuel and diesel, Miller said. The fuels are sold on a wholesale basis to some 300 customers that include Meijer, Costco, Kroger and Flying J. Airline customers of U.S. Refinery include Delta, United, Southwest and Amazon. It all adds up to $6.5 billion in annual revenue.
More than 400 Husky employers and in excess of 200 contract employees work on the company’s sprawling 480-acre Lima facility.
Miller said Husky is “one of Canada’s largest integrated energy companies” with 5,000 employees worldwide. The company has two divisions: offshore drilling and integrated corridor operations, the latter of which includes Lima.
Offshore drilling includes oil facilities in the Atlantic Ocean and natural gas exploration in the North China Sea in Indonesia.
Miller walked the Rotarians through the long and evolving history of the Lima refinery — starting with its establishment in 1886 as a Standard Oil facility. One hundred years later the name changed to SOHIO, and in 1988 British Petroleum acquired the Lima site. In a span of seven years there were three new owners for the refinery — Clark, Pramco and Valero — until Husky purchased the facility a decade ago.
“For more than 130 years the Lima Refinery operations have reflected continuing commitment to the Lima community and the company’s pursuit of excellence,” according to literature distributed by Miller at the Rotary Club meeting. “State-of-the-art refining technology, process control and environmental facilities make the Lima Refinery a leader in protecting the environment while supplying high quality petroleum products for a growing world of needs.”
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