The Shell Geelong Refinery is the larger of the two Shell refineries in Australia, and is situated approximately 60km south west of Melbourne. It processes around 5.3 million tonnes of material per year, and is the second-largest refinery in Australia.

In association with the installation of a new catalytic unit in the early '90's, Shell elected to centralise many individual plant unit controls into a central control room, and replace many of the existing older control systems and single station panel instruments with a single new control system for the refinery. After a detailed evaluation of all Shell International approved suppliers, Yokogawa CENTUM-XL was selected for the Geelong site.

The system was installed in a new blastproof control building within the refinery process areas, with the screens organised in a circular arrangement in the control room at ground floor level, and most of the control cabinets installed in the equipment room in the basement.

Shell's reasons for selecting Yokogawa for this important project were a competitive price and the commitment to the project from Yokogawa at both local and HQ levels, as expressed during many meetings, in particular during a visit to Tokyo during the supplier evaluation stage of the project.

The CENTUM-XL system has given excellent service since start-up, with no refinery downtime being attributable to control system problems.

This plant was migrated in 2003, from CENTUM-XL system to CENTUM CS3000 system, which was the latest system of Yokogawa. Please refer to the "HDS Plant" story for migration information.