Essar Oil announces £360m carbon capture plant in Ellesmere Port

Energy engineer Kent will design and develop the facility, which should be able to reduce carbon emissions by nearly 1m tonnes a year when it opens in 2027.

The carbon capture and storage project from Essar Oil would be part of Stanlow Refinery, situated in Ellesmere Port. Upon completion, the project would take gas emitted from Stanlow Refinery and sequester it into depleted underwater gas fields at Liverpool Bay.

Essar said this process would be capable of eliminating nearly 40% of the refinery’s total emissions.

“This new carbon capture plant is the single biggest initiative to decarbonise our processes and a core element to our hugely ambitious decarbonisation strategy,” said Deepak Maheshwari, chief executive of Essar Oil UK.

“Our ambition is to become a leading low-carbon refinery,” Maheshwari continued. “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.”

Vertex Hydrogen is another project aiding Essar in its goal for Stanlow to be a leading low-carbon refinery by 2030. Vertex is a joint initiative with Progressive Energy and would supply the refinery with more than 280MW of hydrogen which can then be used to help decarbonise the existing facilities at the refinery. The hydrogen will also be used to power a new £45m furnace that would be run completely on hydrogen.

Low-carbon hydrogen production facility Vertex is part of the HyNet cluster. Vertex is meant to deliver around 40% of the national government’s target of hydrogen by 2030.

• READ MORE: Boost for region’s HyNet decarbonisation cluster