Essar to spend £23 million to upgrade Stanlow refinery

Essar Oil will undertake a huge refurbishment at its Stanlow, U.K., refinery this year.
The catalytic cracker will be upgraded at a cost of about £23 million (US$35 million), giving the unit another 25 years of life.
The Indian-owned company will upgrade its gasoline-producing unit and undertake routine maintenance of other parts of the plant.
Essar UK Chief Executive Volker Shultz said increasing the flexibility of the crude oil feedstocks that the plant can process would substantially contribute to improving the refinery’s yield.
He said the refinery would be able to take a wider range of crude oils since it stopped producing lubricating base stocks.
“Lubricants, which were only 1-2% of production, controlled 25% of the crude slate,” he said.
Until February, North Sea crudes constituted three-quarters of the plant’s feedstock, but last month it made up less than half, with West African, North African and Canadian crudes making up the balance.
Volker said the aim of the upgrade was to raise the refinery’s overall margins by US$3 per barrel over three years by using natural gas instead of oil in the boilers, as well as diversification; this should be achieved within about a year from now.