Brofjorden

When herring fishing peaked in the 17th and 18th century, fishing industries flourished all around Brofjorden. The primary products were salted herring and train oil made from boiled herring to extract the oil. The salted herring was sold to traders from Germany and Holland, and the train oil was exported to London, Paris and New York to be used in street lamps. The purest oil, filtrated ten times, was produced at Norra Grundsund just south of the mouth of Brofjorden.[4]

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were several canned food factories around Brofjorden to process the herring and other sea food products. Because of the good quality of the water, there was an oyster farm in the fjord around 1920.[4] By then most if the fishing industry had closed down. The herring fishing had declined and by 1915, mackerel had disappeared from the fjord, only subsistence fishing done by people living by the fjord remained. The canning factory at Sjöbol (58°21′13.4″N 11°26′03.5″E) was later razed to make way for the product terminal at Brofjorden Port.[4][5]

About ten granite quarries were started along the shores of Bjofjorden at the end of the 19th century. Quays and jetties were built at places such as Skalhamn, Fiskebäcksvik, Sjöbol, Lahälla, Rixö, Vinbräcka, Hjälmedal, Sandvik, Loddebo, Ingeröd, and Krabbevik. The red granite was quarried right by the shoreline and loadad onto boats from several European nations.[5] The stone was shipped to be used in urban construction all over Europe.[6] The steep cliffs also allowed ships to moor right by the shores and fill their fresh water supply directly from the small waterfalls that formed after heavy rain, instead if carry it aboard manually.[5] The quarries were in use until the 1930s, when the Great Depression forced them to fold.[6]

During World War II, Brofjorden served as a storage site for part of Operation Bridford. Norwegian boats and ships of all types and sizes came with cargoes consisting of machine parts, especially ball bearings for the British weapons industry, which were transferred to British blockade runners crossing the Skagerrak. According to a German captain on a ship loading granite at Rixö quarry, who served on board a submarine during the war, German submarines also used the deep fjord. They would go there to get away from the fighting for a couple of days, to let the crew rest, sleep and "catch their breath".[4][5]

The Rädda Brofjorden! slogan is still visible on cliffs around the fjord.

Plans for a refinery had been discussed ever since the Swedish consumer-owned oil company Oljekonsumenters Riksförbund (OK), was formed in 1945. There were many long and heated debates in the 1960s, about where the refinery should be located. The two main proposed sites were Brofjorden and Hisingen in Gothenburg. The fjord was deep and wide enough to accommodate large oil tankers, while Hisingen provided an already exploited area with infrastructure on land.[7] Those against establishing the refinery at Brofjorden were in majority, led by Swedish Society for Nature Conservation. An association under the slogan Rädda Brofjorden! ("Save Brofjorden!") was formed and with the newly awakened interest for nature conservation, they received a lot of coverage in media.[7][8][9][10]

Due to the massive protests, environmental issues and safety became two of the main concerns in planning the refinery. Since the plant would also be very visible in the landscape by the fjord, one of the directives was to make it "the world's most beautiful oil refinery ever". Trial runs with tankers were made on the fjord in summer 1970. The largest tanker to test the fjord was the 230,000-ton supertanker Texaco Frankfurt. As of 2015, the largest ship to enter the fjord is the 470,000 dwt Burmah Enterprize.[8]

On 25 November 1970, the government voted in favor of the Brofjorden site and in September 1971, permission was granted to OK to start building the refinery. At an estimated cost of SEK 750–800 million, the refinery was inaugurated on 29 May 1975.[7] While the plant and the storage tanks for the oil products are above ground and visible for miles around the site, the crude oil is stored in four large cisterns that can hold up to 800,000 m³ (28,000,000 cu ft), blasted out of the granite bedrock below the plant.[8]