Moving a 150,000-pound tank through an active refinery takes more than a big crane. It takes careful planning, specialized equipment and a crew that knows exactly what needs to happen at every step.
At the PAR refinery in Billings, Montana, Mountain’s team recently completed the removal and replacement of four butane storage vessels, commonly referred to as “bullets.”
The project spanned approximately a year and a half, with each tank replaced one at a time. After a new bullet was installed, the team had to wait approximately two months to ensure it was fully operational before work could begin on the next one.
Butane is produced during the refining process and stored on site until it is shipped to customers by truck or rail. Multiple storage tanks allow the refinery to maintain inventory through changing demand and planned outages.
“The butane is a product that they make off the crude oil, and it’s a sellable product, but they store it,” explained experienced Mountain employee, Billy Meade. “There are four tanks for a reason. There are peak seasons, low seasons, and when they do outages, they still have to have butane to sell.”
By the time the crew reached the fourth and final bullet, the three newly installed tanks were already live. That created one of the biggest challenges of the project: the approximately 150,000-pound vessel could not be lifted over any live process equipment.
A Liebherr LTM 1750-9.1 was brought in to provide the capacity and reach needed to take the long way around, carefully maneuvering the vessel through a tight operating area before setting it onto Goldhofer trailers.
From there, the bullet was slowly transported through the refinery to the laydown area.
The move required careful coordination between the crane crew, transport team and refinery operations, with every step planned around an active facility.
Once the bullet reached the laydown area, Mountain brought in two more cranes to complete the move.
A 275-ton Link-Belt and Liebherr LTM 1130-5.1 worked together in a tandem pick, each taking approximately half of the 150,000-pound load. The cranes lifted the vessel from the Goldhofer trailers, allowing the transport equipment to be pulled clear before the bullet was lowered onto mats.
“We’re only at about a 22-foot radius. We each have about 75,000 pounds on each end,” explained Jeremy Rieker, a member of Mountain’s Billings team. “We’re well within capacity. We’re probably, at the worst, 60% of the chart down there, so we’re in good shape.”
The removed vessels still have usable life remaining and have been sold to a new owner, while the new bullets will continue serving the refinery.
With four tanks, multiple cranes, specialized transport equipment and months between each replacement, keeping the project moving required coordination well beyond the day of each lift.
“I would say the biggest challenge is coordination between the cranes, having our cranes available at the time and having the platform trailers available, said ”Billy. We have so much work going on right now, you kind of have to share everything.”
Working inside an active refinery also meant plans could change quickly. Even with lifts scheduled well in advance, daily operations had to come first. Jeremy said that made communication among the crew especially important.
“Everybody’s on the same page,” he said. “We have our talk in the morning, everybody knows their job and everybody’s professional. It’s like we’ve worked together for the last 30 years.”
From the first bullet to the fourth, the year-and-a-half project required patience, planning and plenty of coordination. With the final replacement complete, four new butane bullets are now in place and ready to keep product moving.
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