Oil refinery in North Killingholme
Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery is an oil refinery in North Killingholme, North Lincolnshire, England owned and operated by the Prax Group. It lies to the north of the Humber Refinery, owned by rival oil company Phillips 66, and the railway line to Immingham Docks. Immingham Power Station, owned by VPI Immingham, provides the electricity and heat for the fractionation processes.
History and operation.
The site was announced in Belgium on 17 February 1965. East Midlands Gas Board had built a £6.5m site in 1965, in conjunction with Total. The Prince of Wales visited this site on Friday 19 June 1968, later visiting nearby gas field sites in the North Sea.
In the early 1970s the CEGB had planned a 4,000MW oil power station nearby, and another oil power station at Insworke in Cornwall. Both would be cancelled in March 1975.
Construction.
Construction began in November 1965, by Lummus Company. The refinery would process 65,000 barrels per day, which was 3.5m tons per year. It was planned to open in 1967. Storage tanks were built by William Neill of Merseyside.
On Thursday 10 August 1967, around 4pm, a 49 year old construction worker, for Sir Robert McAlpine, was killed, after falling 15 feet on a scaffold. There were 2,000 construction workers. Qualified first aid staff were not sufficient. The worker died in the ambulance.
There was an explosion in a boiler house at 10.20am on Monday 27 November 1967, injured four construction workers. 21 year old Peter Adams, of 65 Macaulay Street in Grimsby, died in an ambulance when being transferred from Scartho Road Hospital to Sheffield.
Opening.
By the end of 1968, UK refining capacity would be 96m tons, an increase of 18m tons in 1968. The refinery cost £30m. The neighbouring refinery also cost £30m.
It was officially opened on Friday 28 June 1968 by the Labour Minister of Power, Ray Gunter.
It was named after the former Lindsey pre-1974 local government area of Lincolnshire.
The refinery entered service in May 1968 as a joint project between Total and Fina.
Operation.
In September 1971 it processed the first North Sea oil from the Norwegian Ekofisk field, from a 30,000 ton tanker.
It currently employs a permanent staff of around 415, as well as several hundred contractors on site, rising to up to several thousand during major turnaround and maintenance projects. In 1999, Total took full control of the plant, when it bought Fina.
Producing around 35 types of product, it currently processes circa 113,000 barrels of oil per day after its refining capacity was almost halved during restructuring initiatives by former operators Total.
Crude oil is imported via two pipelines, connecting the 1,000-metre jetty five miles away at Immingham Dock, to the refinery.
In March 2021, the refinery was bought by Prax Group from Total S.A.
Production units.
More units were added, to take refining capacity to 7m tons in early 1970, at a cost of £10m. The French and Belgian companies had a half of the total capacity each.
From 1973 a 64-mile pipeline was built, to the north west by Total. The £500,000 oil terminal, in Leeds, had opened in April 1968, with oil transported by rail.
Further units added, from 1976, to open in 1979, costing £58m. 1,500 construction workers worked on the development.
By 1977 it was the sixth-largest refinery in the UK, processing around 10m tonnes. A catalytic cracker was built from 1977, which would process 1m tonnes per year, being one third more efficient at fuel processing than previous technology.
In the 1980s, a fluid catalytic cracker, an alkylation unit, a visbreaker, and an MTBE (Methyl tert-butyl ether) unit (for high octane petrol) were added. In May 1982 a £50m development was begun.
From 1988, the Belgian company built a pipeline to an oil terminal Hertfordshire.
By 1998 the site was processing 200,000 barrels per day, and was the UK's third-largest refinery.
In 2007, a distillate hydrotreater (HDS) was built. A hydrogen production unit (a methane steam reformer for the hydrotreater process) is being built, for completion in 2009. The new plant will provide ultra-low sulfur diesel and mean different types of crude oil can be processed, that can be made in a conventional catalytic cracker or hydrocracker. It was built from June 2008 – June 2009 by Jacobs Engineering.
2009 workers dispute.
On 28 January 2009, approximately 800 of Lindsey Oil Refinery's local contractors went on strike following the appointment by the Italian construction contractor IREM of several hundred European (mainly Italian and Portuguese) contractors on the site at a time of high unemployment in the local and global economy.
Subsequently, sympathy walkouts at other UK petroleum, power and chemical sites took place. 700 workers were sacked at the plant in June 2009, resulting in further worker walkouts at other UK sites. Negotiations led to the reinstatement of 647 workers at the end of June 2009.
2010 accident.
On Tuesday 29 June 2010 an explosion and subsequent fire broke out at the plant, killing Robert Greenacre, a 24-year-old worker, and injuring others. It originated beneath an Atmospheric Distillation Column (CDU-2) at a steam out point where maintenance was being carried out. Total reported that firefighters had found traces of asbestos in the refinery's crude oil distillation unit three days after the initial explosion.
Local impact.
The refinery's presence causes a considerable amount of traffic to pass through the village of North Killingholme at the time of work hours commencing and ending. This has caused some disputes with the refinery's neighbouring community.
In December 2004, Total were fined £12,500 for allowing 60,000 litres of crude oil to leak into the Humber Estuary.
References.
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