Ellesmere Port’s oil refinery has chalked up its best ever performance.

Essar Oil UK, which owns and runs Stanlow, has turned in record breaking figures covering the first nine months of its financial year.

In a London announcement the company reported its highest ever earnings before costs for the period at over $300m (£210m) compared with just under $130m (£91m) in 2015.

There was also a record nine-month ‘profit after tax’ at just less than $180m (£126m), up from slightly more than $35m (£24.5m) last year.

An internal measure of refinery performance was also at its best ever level and the plant’s record of having supplies available to customers was 100%.

Plant has added value

Valued at $819m (£573.3m) on December 31, the company produces about 15% of the UK’s demand for road transport fuel. During the period, 6.77m metric tonnes of crude flowed through Stanlow’s pipes, a 7% increase on the previous year’s 6.35m metric tonnes.

Gross revenues stood at $4bn (£2.8bn), a 35% drop on the $6.25bn (£4.375bn) reported in 2015 largely due to the crash in crude oil prices which fell by over 50%.

Essar says that since it acquired Stanlow from Shell, the plant has added value to the company.

The amount of residue being upgraded at the refinery through Europe’s largest cracker reached its highest monthly throughput with a range of products.

'A strong performance'

The cracker saw a record daily production of high value propylene, sold on to one of the world’s largest plastics, chemicals and refining companies near Cheshire’s borders.

During last year Essar also entered the UK retail market and now has three branded service stations, two in the north west.

Essar Oil UK executive chairman Naresh Nayyar said: “This is a strong performance. I am also pleased to see our entry to the UK retail market with Essar-branded service stations and look forward to substantially more sites opening over the next few years.”

Essar Oil UK chief financial officer Sampath P said the business ‘is in a healthy financial position’. Stanlow output includes 3bn litres of petrol, 4.4bn litres of diesel and 2bn litres of jet fuel a year.