The story
Built by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (later BP) on the basis of a lease obtained in 1909, it was completed in 1912 as a pipeline terminus, and was one of the world's largest oil refineries. In 1927, oil exports from Abadan totalled nearly 4.5 million tons.
Its nationalisation in 1951 prompted the Abadan Crisis and ultimately the toppling of the democratically elected prime minister Mossaddegh.
The refinery was largely destroyed in September 1980 by Iraq during the initial stages of the Iraqi invasion of Iran's Khuzestan province, triggering the Iran–Iraq War. It had a capacity of 635,000 b/d in 1980 and formed a refinery complex with important petrochemical plants. Its capacity started to bounce back after the war ended in 1988, and was listed in 2013 as 429,000 barrels per day (68,200 m3/d) of crude oil.
In December 2017, Sinopec signed a US$1 billion deal to expand the Abadan refinery. Work on the second phase of the project was suspended in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran.
In 2026, missiles fired by the Israeli Defence Forces inflicted significant damage to most of Abadan, including the refinery, amidst the US-Iranian conflict.
From Wikipedia’s article on Abadan Refinery, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4