 Since the late 1960s, one of ConocoPhillips’ key assets in the UK has gained an international reputation while producing products for the benefit of customers at home and abroad.
Humber Refinery is recognised as one of the best in the world, with a near-continuous programme of investment designed to maintain its place in the international league table. This east coast location allows cost-effective North Sea crude oil imports and product exports to European and world markets.
Construction began on the 480-acre site at South Killingholme on the Humber Estuary in 1966 and was completed three years later at a cost of £50 million. To put that into perspective, investment in the refinery since that time runs into hundreds of millions of pounds.
The refinery can process some 234,000 barrels of oil a day into a range of products, from low-sulphur petrol and diesel to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), heating oil and industrial feedstocks such as propylene. However, the refinery is unique in the UK in producing petroleum coke, a vital ingredient in smelting steel and aluminium. The company’s expertise in this highly specialised, premium product has made petroleum coke a key export earner.
Crude oil (primarily from the North Sea) arrives by marine tanker to offload at the Tetney monobuoy in the Humber Estuary. From there, oil is pumped by subsea pipeline to tank storage at Tetney oil terminal, before being piped to the refinery for processing. Refined products are exported by ship from Immingham dock and transported to inland customers by road, rail and pipeline.
One unexpected feature of the refinery is Houlton’s Covert, a 40-acre nature reserve home to owls, red deer and other wildlife.
 The reserve was created by company employees from scrubland within the refinery grounds and is a popular resource for local schools. It is still managed by employee volunteers in their free time.
Facts and Figures
- Humber refinery produces around 700,000 tonnes of petroleum coke per year – it is the world’s major supplier of high-grade petroleum coke.
- Humber refinery produces around 14 million litres of petrol every day – enough for an average family car to make two round trips to the moon.
- A purpose-built warehouse at Immingham docks stores the petroleum coke before it’s shipped out. The warehouse has an internal area equal to Wembley Stadium.
- ConocoPhillips Limited plans to invest a further £700 million at its Humber refinery in the period up to 2010 to keep it at the forefront of the industry.
Further information is available on ConocoPhillips' worldwide Refining & Marketing activity on the corporate site.
|