Western Australia has had no operating refinery since March 2021. Every litre of petrol and diesel sold in the State arrives by sea.
A few hours north of Perth, the onshore Perth Basin produces light liquids of its own, and every one of them leaves. Perth Basin Condensate is stabilised at the gas plant, loaded into road tankers and driven out of the State as raw feedstock. Perth Basin Crude lost its outlet altogether in 2021, when the refinery at Kwinana, on the coast south of Perth, stopped refining and became an import terminal.
Swan Refining is developing a modular refinery in the basin that will turn the same barrel into finished fuel for the market on its doorstep. Condensate first. Crude after it.
Western Australia sends its energy away, then buys it back
Kwinana supplied the State with petrol and diesel for decades. Fuel now arrives by ship, is stored at a marine terminal and is distributed inland by road.
Refining in Australia now sits in two plants, both on the east coast, and Western Australia holds neither of them. That concentration is not a theoretical exposure. A fire on 15 April 2026 took a unit at one of those two refineries out of service, and its operator has said it expects to run without that unit through 2027. One mechanical failure in one of two plants moved the national supply position within hours.
Western Australia carries that exposure and holds none of the capacity.
The other half of the position sits under the ground. There is no refining capacity in the basin and no operating refinery in the State, so the basin's liquids are stabilised at the gas plant, put into road tankers and driven away. On the routes disclosed in the public record Perth Basin Condensate travels about 2,500 kilometres by road across the Nullarbor to Port Bonython in South Australia, where it is separated and shipped on as naphtha to refineries elsewhere. The basin's largest approved future stream is currently planned to go to the port at Geraldton for export, and the stabilisation and offloading system and the road route for it are yet to be built.
So a valuable light liquid is produced a long way inland and the only way out is a truck. That is the producer's problem, and it is where this project starts.
Phase One, Condensate. A modern refinery, built in modules
Condensate is the light liquid that comes up with natural gas. The northern Perth Basin produces it inland, low in sulphur, which makes it the straightforward end of the barrel to refine.
The plant will be a compact atmospheric distillation unit with a catalytic reforming pathway on the naphtha stream. It will separate Perth Basin Condensate into light ends, a naphtha stream and a distillate stream, and lift the naphtha to a petrol grade octane. The products will be unleaded petrol, a gas oil cut in the diesel range and LPG.
The design basis is 500 barrels a day nameplate, expandable in further 500 barrel increments toward 2,000. It will be built from standardised, skid-mounted units and delivered as modules.
A modular plant is quicker to deploy and sits on a smaller footprint than a conventional refinery, and it avoids the exposure of a single large build where nothing earns until the whole of it is finished. Capacity goes in as feedstock grows rather than ahead of it.
Three Perth Basin Condensate streams have been assayed. Perth Basin Condensate runs 44 to 55 degrees API, and the sand analyses held measure 59 to 85 milligrams per kilogram of sulphur. At those levels it will need no hydrotreater.
Since 2021 Perth Basin Crude has had nowhere in the State to be refined
Kwinana took Perth Basin Crude as well as Perth Basin Condensate. It went down by road under supply agreements that ran for years, and those agreements ended when refining stopped. No refinery in Western Australia has taken Perth Basin Crude since.
A producer deciding whether to develop a well has to know where the oil goes. Without a refinery in the State the choice is a long haul interstate or an export cargo, and either one sits against every barrel before anything is earned. Perth Basin Crude that would otherwise be developed stays in the ground.
Producers holding undeveloped Perth Basin Crude have approached Swan Refining on that basis. The plant will take Perth Basin Crude as readily as Perth Basin Condensate, with one unit added. What has changed is that there is now a reason to build it that way.
Phase Two, Crude. The refinery is not held to one feedstock
Perth Basin Crude is light and sweet. It measures 37.8 degrees API and 0.12 per cent sulphur by weight. It carries 12.6 per cent wax and sets if it is allowed to cool, so tanks would be heated and lines traced. That is routine handling and it does not change the plant.
| Stream | What it measures | What it would need |
|---|---|---|
| Naphtha, both cuts | Under 10 mg/kg sulphur, 1 ppm mercaptan | Nothing. Straight to the reformer |
| Kerosene | 30 mg/kg sulphur, 28 mm smoke point, minus 58 freeze point | Nothing on sulphur |
| Gas oil, the diesel cut | 600 mg/kg sulphur, cetane index 57.6 | A distillate hydrotreater |
| Residue | 26.3 API, 0.2 per cent sulphur, 45 degree pour point | Handling, not treating |
| Whole Crude | 37.8 API, 12.6 per cent wax, 27 degree pour point | Heated storage and traced lines |
The gas oil carries 600 milligrams per kilogram of sulphur against a 10 milligram standard for road diesel, and takes a distillate hydrotreater. Nothing else changes. The naphtha goes to the reformer untreated, the kerosene needs no treating on sulphur, and the distillation train, the reformer and the product slate are the Phase One design unchanged. On a modular plant a hydrotreater is another module.
A brownfield head start
On anything that processes hydrocarbons, approvals take longer than construction, and land use is the slowest approval of all.
The project is looking at locations where petroleum land use is already established rather than ground that has to be taken through rezoning from the beginning. Sites of that kind commonly carry power, water treatment, tankage, metering and sealed road access already in place. That is a large part of what a bare site would have to build before it could make anything, and it shortens the timeline and lowers the execution risk.
A staged route to production
Each phase stands on the one before it. Phase One will establish the plant on Perth Basin Condensate and expand in measured increments as feedstock and demand grow. Phase Two will add a single unit and bring Perth Basin Crude into the same refinery.
The order of work runs in one direction. The market establishes which products are worth making. The producers establish which barrels are available and of what quality. Those two settle the configuration, and the configuration settles the capital.
Building Western Australia's fuel security
Development stage. Swan Refining Pty Ltd holds the project and was registered on 8 September 2026. PanEuro Special Situations Limited is engaged as exclusive financial and strategic adviser. Three Perth Basin Condensate streams have been assayed, locations are under review in the Mid West of the State, and feedstock conversations are under way with producers in the basin and with the Western Australian fuel market.
A full information memorandum carries the detail behind each step and is available to parties who have signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Enquiries: projects@paneuro.co.uk
What each figure on this page rests on
- Fuel sales: Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Australian Petroleum Statistics, August 2026 data vintage, Western Australia, 2025-26.
- Perth Basin Crude properties from a comparative field assay authored 1998 and last printed 2003.
- Perth Basin Condensate properties from the laboratory analyses held by the project.
- Routes, distances and approvals as disclosed in the public record.