Owner of the giant Stanlow oil refinery on the Mersey Estuary, EET Fuels, launches turnaround plan as global oil market volatility sees pre-tax losses widen to £241m. Tony McDonough reports
Global oil market volatility is being blamed for a significant widening of pre-tax losses at the owner of the giant Stanlow oil refinery close to the Mersey Estuary.
Essar Oil UK (now trading as EET Fuels) has posted its annual accounts for the 12 months to March 31, 2025, on Companies House. They show revenues flat at around £7.6bn. EET reports in US dollars and LBN has converted to sterling.
In the previous year the business, which employs more than 1,200 people, reported pre-tax losses of £69m. These latest accounts show a pre-tax losses of £241m.
However, in the last few days the company has said that its 2025 calendar year it chieved its highest-ever domestic sales since acquisition by Essar in 2011. Operational throughput has seen a significant uptick, with crude oil volumes up 8% compared to 2024.
Chief executive Deepak Maheshwari wrote in the annual report that the past few years have been “extremely challenging for our industry and for our business”. He added: “The Russia-Ukraine conflict triggered on precedented volatility global energy markets, disrupting supply chain and driving sharp swings in refining margins.”
He went on: “The reporting part of this report reflects a turning point for margins in north west Europe as they weakened significantly.
“This sustained pressure has led to rationalisation of the refining sector across Europe and the UK and has impacted significantly on our own profitability.
“These challenges are unfortunately being compounded by disappointingly high unplanned downtime performance with a single unit contributing to over 60% of the disruption.”
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Stanlow provides around 16% of all the UK’s road fuels and supplies jet fuel to multiple airports including Liverpool and Manchester. It also has joint ventures at other UK terminals and operates more than 50 retail petrol stations.
Crude oil refined at Stanlow is unloaded at the Tranmere Oil Terminal before being delivered to the refinery via an underground pipeline. Around 150 supertankers from all over the world call at Tranmere each year.
And around 500 smaller tankers make the journey up the Mersey to the Manchester Ship Canal to Stanlow where they collect the refined petroleum products.
During the financial year EET saw the throughput of crude oil through Stanlow fall to 59.21m barrels from 60.25m in the prevous year. Two years ago that figure was 65.61m barrels.
Stanlow is also the nerve centre of the multi-billion pound HyNet hydrogen production and carbon capture project, of which EET is a partner. EET is also investing in its own hydrogen and carbon capture facilities as part of its net zero ambitions.
Mr Maheshwari added: “Our business continues to face operating cost pressures driven primarily by high inflation and carbon costs and we have, at the time of writing, already initiated several cost reduction initiatives and are planning additional measures.
“Our focus has shifted to value creation through the launch of a comprehensive business improvement plan. This plan targets optimisation (margin enhancement) alongside cost reduction over the next two years, supported by retail expansion and decarbonisation.”