Stanlow Refinery is an oil refinery

Oil refinery

An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas...

 owned by Essar Energy

Essar Energy

Essar Energy plc is a United Kingdom-incorporated, Mauritius-headquartered energy business operating primarily in India. Part of the Essar Group, the firm has interests in both the power generation and petroleum industries...

 in Ellesmere Port

Ellesmere Port

Ellesmere Port is a large industrial town and port in the unitary authority of Cheshire West and Chester and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. It is situated on the south border of the Wirral Peninsula on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal, which in turn gives access to the River...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It was previously owned by Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

 and is part of the Shell Stanlow Manufacturing Complex.

History

The refinery occupies nearly 1900 acres (7.7 km²) near the River Mersey

River Mersey

The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....

 and dates back to 1924, when a small bitumen plant was established.

In the 1970s an oil pipeline was constructed from Amlwch

Amlwch

Amlwch is the most northerly town in Wales. It is situated on the north coast of the Isle of Anglesey, on the A5025 which connects it to Holyhead and to Menai Bridge. The town has no beach, but it has impressive coastal cliffs. Tourism is an important element of the local economy. At one time it...

, Anglesey

Anglesey

Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...

 to Stanlow. Crude oil was pumped ashore from tankers moored at deep-water pontoons. The pipeline closed in the early 1980s.

Crude oil is now received lower down river on the Mersey at the Tranmere Oil Terminal

Tranmere Oil Terminal

Tranmere Oil Terminal is situated on the River Mersey, 1½ miles south of Birkenhead. It was opened on 8 June 1960 to handle vessels of up to 65,000 tons, and is connected to the Stanlow Oil Refinery by a 15-mile pipeline...

, operated by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board from its Liverpool headquarters, and is transferred via a fifteen mile (24 km) pipeline to storage at Stanlow. Output is delivered by pipeline via the UK oil pipeline network

UK oil pipeline network

The United Kingdom Oil Pipeline is an oil products pipeline opened in 1969 and connecting the two Shell refineries of Stanlow and Shell Haven...

, road and the Manchester Ship Canal

Manchester Ship Canal

The Manchester Ship Canal is a river navigation 36 miles long in the North West of England. Starting at the Mersey Estuary near Liverpool, it generally follows the original routes of the rivers Mersey and Irwell through the historic counties of Cheshire and Lancashire. Several sets of locks lift...

.

Stanlow and Thornton railway station

Stanlow and Thornton railway station

The unstaffed rail station at Stanlow & Thornton is located within the Stanlow Shell oil refinery in Cheshire, England.The UK OS Grid Reference is SJ441760.It lies on Northern Rail's line between Ellesmere Port and Helsby...

 serves employees and visitors of the refinery.

The Stanlow refinery was reported as being for sale by the Financial Times in August 2009, with possible purchasers including India's Essar Oil

Essar Oil

Essar Oil is an Indian integrated oil and gas company that is part of the Essar group based in Mumbai. It operates a major refinery in Gujarat, India, which made it the second largest non-state refiner in India in 2009....

, USA's Valero and the Libyan Government. The reason for the proposed sale was cited as its size (272,000 bbd), although Shell executives indicated that if no sale could be agreed, it was their intention to continue to operate the refinery and not to close it.

Statistics

Storage capacity: 2 million tonnes of crude oil and products

Refining capacity: 12 million tonnes per year. The manufacturing complex employs 800 people.

• Product output
• petrol 3 million tonnes
• diesel 3.5 million tonnes
• kerosene
  Kerosene
  Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage, also known as paraffin or paraffin oil in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Ireland and South Africa, is a combustible hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek keros...
  
  /jet fuel 2 million tonnes
• LPG & petrochemical feedstocks 1.5 million tonnes
• Fuel oil
  Fuel oil
  Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace or boiler for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash...
  
   1 million tonnes

Cultural references

In 1980, the British synth pop band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are a synthpop group whose founding members are originally from the Wirral Peninsula, England...

 featured a song about the refinery called "Stanlow" on their second album, Organisation

Organisation (album)

-2003 remaster:# "Enola Gay" – 3:33# "2nd Thought" – 4:15# "VCL XI" – 3:50# "Motion and Heart" – 3:16# "Statues" – 4:30...

.

Jesu

Jesu (band)

Jesu is a post-metal band formed in 2003 by Justin Broadrick following the breakup of Godflesh. Jesu was the name of the last song on the final Godflesh release, Hymns, and Broadrick decided to adopt it as the name of this project....

's 2007 album Conqueror features a track titled "Stanlow" that concerns itself with the refinery.

External links

• Stanlow United Website of the Stanlow unionised workforce.