Bulk Liquids Berth

The infrastructure at the Bulk Liquids Berth is nothing subtle. Massive pipes and steel gantries reach out from the shore across the water, built to do one thing precisely: move bulk liquids between tanker and land at volume. The berth is part of Port Botany's two-berth liquid terminal, positioned at the western end of the port on the northern shore of Botany Bay, 12 kilometres south of the Sydney CBD. Port Botany was officially opened on 10 December 1979 by Premier Neville Wran, who described it as "the most dramatic change ever in Australian ports." The liquid terminal was part of that original build, constructed alongside the northern container terminal during the 1971 to 1979 construction phase. The port itself sits on land that did not exist before that work began. The site was dredged from the floor of Botany Bay and built up from sand, one of the largest reclamation projects in New South Wales history. The bulk liquid capacity grew progressively through the 1980s and into the 2000s, with AGL storage caverns added in 1994 and again in 2000. A second bulk liquid berth expansion became operational in mid-2013, doubling the terminal's liquid handling capacity. Together the two berths now process over 5.5 million kilolitres per year. That figure covers 100 per cent of NSW's bitumen supply, 90 per cent of its bulk chemicals, around 30 per cent of its refined petroleum, and 15 per cent of its aviation fuel. Below the port, at 130 metres depth, an Elgas LPG storage cavern holds 65,000 tonnes and handles 98 per cent of NSW's LPG supply. This photograph, made in 2019, records that infrastructure at rest: gantries over open water, pipework tracing the connection between shore and berth face, the scale of what it takes to keep a city supplied.