New Stanlow owner Essar pledges further investment for Ellesmere Port refinery
ESSAR Energy, which takes control of the former Shell Stanlow oil refinery on August 1, is to commit further funding to the site on top of the £250m four-year investment programme already in place.
The group, which has extensive energy interests in India, bought Stanlow this April for £219m, which was expected to rise to £700m after including the plant’s fuel stocks.
Spokesman Andrew Turpin said additional funding will go into an upgrade of the Tranmere river jetty to handle more fuel imports from refineries in India, South America and the Urals mountain range in Russia.
New natural gas boilers will replace existing fuel oil boilers, and improvements to a diesel hydrotreater will clear production bottlenecks, allowing heavier, cheaper, crude oil to be processed as part of a plan to increase diesel and jet fuel production as soon as possible.
Mr Turpin said demand for petrol in the UK has been declining since 1990, and Stanlow has even been exporting surplus petrol production to the USA. However, the UK currently imports 3.5m tonnes of diesel and 5m tonnes of jet fuel a year, which is expected to double by 2020.
So Stanlow will boost production of these two fuels as it ramps up from its current 70% capacity to almost full production over the coming months.
It could also, as one of only eight UK refineries and the second biggest behind Fawley, on the south coast, extend its reach to the North-East after the closure last year of a Teesside plant.
Stanlow already has direct pipelines to Liverpool John Lennon and Manchester airports, and a supply pipeline as far as the Thames.
Mr Turpin said: “Stanlow has good storage capacity and a good distribution network.
“There will be more crude coming in and more fuels going out.”
The plant currently employs about 960 staff, and Mr Turpin said Essar’s plans to increase capacity and store more fuel imports will create some new jobs.
He said: “There will be some recruitment. There certainly won’t be a decrease.”
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