North Ryde NSW, Australia - March 31, 2004

Shell Refineries Commence Tank Movement Upgrade

Shell's two Australian refineries, at Geelong in Victoria and Clyde in NSW, have each awarded Yokogawa Australia a contract to supply them with modern, state-of-the-art oil movements and tank information systems. The new systems will replace proprietary in-house technology which has been in use for twenty years.

In a refinery tank farm, raw materials, intermediate products, and final products are stored prior to being used in the refinery or shipped to market. Product movements between tanks, process units, and input and output terminals are continually occurring as part of the normal refinery business and process flow. Inventory tracking and balancing is vitally important to the profitability of the refineries, and losses must be kept to a minimum.

Although both the Geelong and Clyde refineries are in the world's best category for minimum inventory loss, they are keen to further improve their position with the new systems.

Yokogawa will provide an Inventory Tracking and Management System, which is based on the Yokogawa Exaquantum process information management system and Visa value-added application extensions. The system will display and store tank inventory information, manage and track material movements between tanks and process or terminal nodes, store movement transactional records, perform mass balances with reconciliation, calculate and propagate component mixtures, interface with other business systems, enable comprehensive reporting facilities, and provide a detailed human interface for operational, engineering and management personnel.

Shell and Yokogawa expect many benefits from the new system, including:

• Greater reliability and availability
• Reduction in product losses
• Reduced support costs
• Reduced risk of movement errors
• Greater environmental security

John McGuire, Clyde and Geelong's Special Projects Manager, has commented, "Oil Movements projects have traditionally been complex and involved, with a great deal of custom engineering effort required. With this new Yokogawa approach, we anticipate a more straight-forward implementation because of the largely configurable Exaquantum and Visa Applications used by Yokogawa."

Trevor Briggs, Managing Director of Yokogawa Australia, comments, "Yokogawa has been involved in oil movements systems for many years. We look forward to applying this extensive level of expertise in this new and future direction, an applied system which is independent of the DCS but with the capability of being able to interact with the DCS to effect a complete oil movements supervisory solution."

Nigel Bowden, the Managing Director of Yokogawa Marex in the UK, the Global MES Centre for Yokogawa, added, "This project forms an ideal marriage of Yokogawa's Exaquantum information system, Visa application extensions, and industry expertise."

The projects have been developed based on guidelines in Shell's "Early Involvement of Main Automation Contractor" program, which involves a cooperative effort by supplier and end user in developing functional design and application specifications and agreed scope and pricing. This has produced smooth business interfaces and both parties have benefited from the combined best knowledge, experience and systems of all involved parties.

The projects will be managed and engineered by Yokogawa Australia with technical and development support from Yokogawa Marex in the UK. Yokogawa Electric Corporation in Tokyo will provide corporate and application support.

Shell Australia have formed a project team to interface with the Yokogawa team, comprising representatives from both refineries, from Shell Australia head office, and Shell Global Solutions Incorporated in The Hague.