The refinery was built in the early 1930s as one of two refineries (the other in
Gonfreville) whose purpose was to refine a new source of Middle Eastern crude oil. The
Compagnie Francaise des Petroles held a 23.75% share in the
Iraq Petroleum Company, which had struck oil in Kirkuk in 1927 and in 1934 had completed
a pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea. With the
Fall of France, Syria and the pipeline terminal at
Tripoli were under the control of the Vichy Government, but with Iraq on the side of the Allies, oil deliveries came to a halt. With the
Syria–Lebanon campaign in the summer of 1941 the Allies regained control of the entire pipeline system and with the
Battle of Marseille at the end of August 1944 gained control of the refinery. While the refineries on the Atlantic coast were destroyed or severely damaged, the three refineries near Marseille remained intact: La Mede, Etang de Berre and Lavera. The prewar capacity of 900,000 tons per year (18,750bpd) at La Mede was still available in 1945 and had risen to 1,200,000 (25,000bpd) in 1947. France as a whole had a prewar refining capacity of 8,100,000 tons per year (168,750bpd), which fell to 1,800,000tpa (37,500bpd) in 1945 and recovered by 1947 to 6,680,000tpa (140,000bpd). In 1961 the two plants at Gonfreville (150,000bpd) and Martigues (136,000bpd) were the two largest in France (total 914,715bpd crude oil capacity). The plant entered operation in 1935 as a crude oil and petrochemical plant. The plant stopped production of petroleum in 2016. In 1992 the plant had a
gas explosion. == References ==