The refinery occupies nearly near the
River Mersey and dates back to 1924, when a small
bitumen plant was established.
Stanlow & Thornton railway station was opened in 1940 to give workers access to the site and the facility an extra mode of transport. However, this station is now only served by three trains daily towards each of
Ellesmere Port (westbound) and
Helsby (eastbound), with these services scheduled to depart at times which would be inconvenient for the workers. In 1974 an oil pipeline was commissioned from
Amlwch,
Anglesey to Stanlow.
Crude oil was pumped ashore from tankers moored at deep-water pontoons to a holding station at Rhosgoch, from there it was pumped through two 36-inch diameter pipelines, 127 km to Stanlow. The pipeline had closed by 1990. Crude oil is now received lower down river on the Mersey at the Tranmere Oil Terminal, operated by the
Mersey Docks and Harbour Company from its Liverpool headquarters, and is transferred via a fifteen-mile (24 km) pipeline to storage at Stanlow. Output is delivered via various means, including by pipeline via the
UK oil pipeline network, road and the
Manchester Ship Canal. There is also a pipeline for
jet fuel to
Manchester Airport. In 2010,
Royal Dutch Shell declared their desire to sell off some refineries in Europe to concentrate on emerging markets in
Asia and the
Middle East, which led to the possibility that Stanlow would be shut down indefinitely. However, Shell said that a number of refineries in their portfolio offered over-capacity and consequently Stanlow, their last British refinery, was put up for sale. After a prolonged period of negotiation, Stanlow was sold by Shell to Essar Energy for approximately $1.3 billion (£814 million) in 2011. Following the bankruptcy of Petroplus which ran the Coryton Refinery in January 2012, Essar stated their belief that Stanlow, being a large refinery, would be able to compete with refineries in Asia and the Middle East. Essar plan a £250 million expansion of Stanlow, with production of diesel and aviation fuel to be increased. In April 2021 the company was reported to be heavily in debt after
fossil fuel demand dropped during the
COVID-19 pandemic. In September 2021 it was reported that the facility is at the "brink of collapse". In February 2023, Essar launched Essar Energy Transition for the development of what has been reported as the 'UK's leading energy transition hub' as part of the regional
decarbonisation cluster known as Hynet, alongside a $2.4 billion (£1.9 billion) investment in the refinery. In December 2023, the company reported $66.3 million (£51.7 million) of profit on $11.8 billion (£9 billion) of revenue in its annual results to March 2023. Stanlow operator, Essar Oil UK, changed its trading name to EET Fuels in January 2024 and announced that $1.2 billion would be allocated to support the refinery’s industrial decarbonisation. The refinery announced its plan to reduce
carbon emissions by 95 per cent by 2030 through industrial
carbon capture and switching from
natural gas and other refinery fuel sources to
hydrogen as a fuel. ==Stanlow Island==