Essar Oil UK invests £360m in CCS at Stanlow

ESSAR Oil UK, which produces 16% of the UK’s transport fuels, plans to build a £360m (US$430m) carbon capture plant at its Stanlow refinery, in line with its ambition of becoming a leading low carbon refinery by 2030.

The planned facility will capture CO2 emitted by what Essar says is one of Europe’s largest full-Residue Fluidised Catalytic Cracking units, at its Stanlow refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, UK. Expected in 2027, it will capture 810,000 t/y of CO2 and eliminate nearly 40% of the refinery’s emissions. The captured CO2 will be stored in depleted gas fields under the sea in Liverpool Bay, as part of the HyNet cluster infrastructure in the North West of England. Earlier this year, Essar’s carbon capture unit was selected as a Phase 2 winner in a competition for carbon capture projects wishing to connect to CO2 transport and storage infrastructure that will be developed through the UK’s Track 1 CCUS clusters, including HyNet.

Essar has awarded the pre-FEED engineering contact to develop the carbon capture facility to integrated energy services company Kent.

Deepak Maheshwari, CEO of Essar Oil UK, said: “This new carbon capture plant is the single biggest initiative to decarbonise our processes and a core element to our hugely ambitious decarbonisation strategy. Our ambition is to become a leading low carbon refinery. This is a massive undertaking, but it is a journey we are fully committed to. Not only is it the right environmental thing to do, it will future proof the critical Stanlow refinery for the long term, protecting jobs and industry, while also placing Stanlow at the very centre of the UK’s energy transition.”

Essar is investing more than £1bn into a range of energy efficiency, fuel switching, and carbon capture initiatives, towards its decarbonisation goal.

Correction: This article originally stated that HyNet was selected as a Phase 2 winner in the UK’s CCUS cluster sequencing process. It has been corrected to say that Essar’s carbon capture unit was selected as a Phase 2 winner in a competition for carbon capture projects wishing to connect to CO2 transport and storage infrastructure that will be developed through the UK’s Track 1 CCUS clusters, including HyNet.