Ellesmere Port’s oil refinery has chalked up a record first half year.
With oil companies traditionally reporting in US dollars, Essar Oil has revealed it brought in record basic earnings of $264m in the sixth months from April, up from $118m in the same period the previous year.
Profits after tax were also a record at $169m against $51m while revenues were $2.7bn.
On Britain‘s roads the company expanded its UK retail network to 42 sites with a further four added since.
And the company ended the half year in a ‘strong financial position’ with a net worth of $1.15bn.
Referring to the ‘continuing Essar success story at Stanlow’ the company describes the refinery as ‘a key national asset’ producing 16% of the UK’s road transport fuel demand.
During the period, Stanlow processed 4.5m metric tonnes of crude oil with the company continuing to make ‘good progress’ on its plans to invest $250m in capital expenditure and maintenance to ramp up throughput, improve yields and drive revenues.
“This major investment will increase annual throughput from 68m to 75m barrels,” says Essar.
A ‘significant improvement’ has already been achieved in the refinery’s operating and financial performance.
Essar Oil UK’s non-executive chairman Prashant Ruia said: “The Stanlow refinery is a core sector asset of national importance for the UK and we are extremely happy that it has been delivering consistently robust performance.”
He says the company is committed to the growth of the UK’s oil and gas economy and has invested more than $800m in the Stanlow refinery including improved environment standards and safety.
Chief executive officer S Thangapandian commented: “To further develop the Essar Oil UK business we continued the roll-out our UK retail network, grew the direct supply of aviation fuel to major airlines and have started leasing storage in Rotterdam, together with blending and jetty infrastructure, in order to cater to gasoline export markets directly.”
Mr Thangapandian says Essar has a ‘strong focus on health and safety across our entire organisation’ and is also looking forward to completing its $137m ‘Tiger Cub’ project at Stanlow for major improvements to key units. Stanlow’s output includes 3bn litres of petrol, 4.4bn litres of diesel and 2bn litres of jet fuel a year.
Essar has previously announced it is to open a flagship filling station on its doorstep at the former Elton Green filling station on the A5117 next year.
