For the construction of petrochemical plants, it is useful to site refineries in areas where there is abundant space to be used by the same company or others, solvent manufacturing (fine fractionating) plants and/or similar plants to allow these easy access to large output refinery products for further processing, or plants that produce chemical additives that the refinery may need to blend into a product at source rather than at blending terminals.
For refineries which use large amounts of process steam and cooling water, an abundant source of water is important. Because of this, oil refineries are often located (associated to a port) near navigable rivers or even better on a sea shore. Either are of dual purpose, making also available cheap transport by river or by sea. Although the advantages of crude oil transport by pipeline are evident, and the method is also often used by oil companies to deliver large output products such as fuels to their bulk distribution terminals, pipeline delivery is not practical for small output products. For these, rail cars, road tankers or barges may be used.
The principles of finding a construction site for chemical plants are:
1. The site has to be reasonably far from residential areas.
2. Facilities for raw materials access and products delivery to markets should be easily available.
3. Processing energy requirements should be easily available.
4. Waste product disposal should not cause difficulties.
Locating the site for refineries are similar to those principles stated above for chemical plants.
