The Teesside Refinery was an

oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, lique ...

and chemical plant situated just south of Seaton Carew on the River Tees in County Durham. In 2000, it was bought by Petroplus from ICI and

Phillips Petroleum Company Phillips Petroleum Company was an American oil company incorporated in 1917 that expanded into petroleum refining, marketing and transportation, natural gas gathering and the chemicals sectors. It was Phillips Petroleum that first found oil in the ...

. Refining was suspended in 2009, although the site continues to operate as a terminal and storage facility.

History

In the period 1965-1968, three oil refineries were developed close to

Teesport Teesport is a large sea port located in the unitary authority of Redcar and Cleveland, in the ceremonial county of North Yorkshire, Northern England. Owned by PD Ports, it is located approximately inland from the North Sea and east of Middl ...

on the River Tees, thanks to the Phillips Petroleum's development of the

Ekofisk oil field Ekofisk is an oil field in block 2/4 of the Norwegian sector of the North Sea about southwest of Stavanger. Discovered in 1969 by Phillips Petroleum Company, it remains one of the most important oil fields in the North Sea. This was the first ...

in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea, epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the ...

. The first two were jointly developed and operated by Phillips and ICI on the north shore of the River Tees, just south of Greatham Creek. After processing this facility fed cyclohexane,

benzene Benzene is an organic chemical compound with the molecular formula C6H6. The benzene molecule is composed of six carbon atoms joined in a planar ring with one hydrogen atom attached to each. Because it contains only carbon and hydrogen atoms ...

toluene Toluene (), also known as toluol (), is a substituted aromatic hydrocarbon. It is a colorless, water-insoluble liquid with the smell associated with paint thinners. It is a mono-substituted benzene derivative, consisting of a methyl group (CH3) a ...

and

xylene In organic chemistry, xylene or xylol (; IUPAC name: dimethylbenzene) are any of three organic compounds with the formula . They are derived from the substitution of two hydrogen atoms with methyl groups in a benzene ring; which hydrogens are s ...

to ICI's chemical plants at

Billingham Billingham is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, England. The town is on the north side of the River Tees and is governed by Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council. The settlement had previously formed i ...

and Wilton. The third refinery was developed in 1968 by Shell Oil on the south shore within Teesport. In 1980, with the discovery of North Sea gas, a

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

was installed between Ekofisk and

Seal Sands Seal Sands () is a 294.37 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in County Durham, England, notified in 1966. Situated in the mouth of the River Tees next to Greatham Creek and Seaton-on-Tees Channel, the site is accessible ...

on the north shore. Although the Shell refinery was mothballed in 1989 and later closed, as a result of the pipeline petrochemicals traffic still today represents about 50% of the cargo through Teesport, around 26 million tonnes a year.

Operations

Today the Teesside Refinery is a crude oil reception, storage and trans-shipment installation. Operations consist of both processing and tanker loading facilities and cover a site. Stabilised oil is stored in a tank farm at Greatham. A corridor containing pipelines, communications and utility services links the two sites, operated jointly by 270 employees. In its 35 years of operations, the terminal has processed over five billion

barrels A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, u ...

of oil, seen 15,000 ships visit their jetties and had a first-class safety record. The plant has also been run with a

downtime The term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable. The unavailability is the proportion of a time-span that a system is unavailable or offline. This is usually a result of the system failing to function because of an u ...

of less than 24 hours in 30 years. On site there is a

canteen {{Primary sources, date=February 2007 Canteen is an Australian national support organisation for young people (aged 12–25) living with cancer; including cancer patients, their brothers and sisters, and young people with parents or primary carers ...

, an active sports and social club and People SPIRIT team who organise a variety of activities. When owned by ConocoPhillips they continually funded technical

apprenticeship Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...

schemes in the area, and were directly involved in local primary and secondary school

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...

. Initiatives ranged from donating computers and funding school exchange programmes, to providing engineers for maths and science days.

Accreditation

The Teesside terminal is certified to ISO 14001, the international environmental management system standard, which it has held continuously since October 1998. The site is on the fringe of the

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...

mudflats of

, an area of considerable conservation interest and home to

wildfowl The Anatidae are the biological family of water birds that includes ducks, geese, and swans. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring on all the world's continents except Antarctica. These birds are adapted for swimming, floating on ...

and

seal Seal may refer to any of the following: Common uses * Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly: ** Earless seal, or "true seal" ** Fur seal * Seal (emblem), a device to imp ...

colonies.

Awards

The terminal has received numerous Gold Medals and President’s awards from the

Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) is a British charity that aims to save lives and prevent life-changing injuries which occur as a result of accidents. In the past, it has successfully campaigned on issues of road safet ...

(RoSPA) over the years. These awards are in recognition of the site’s

occupational safety Occupational safety and health (OSH), also commonly referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS), occupational health, or occupational safety, is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at wor ...

achievements acknowledging successful management of occupational health and accident prevention.

Refining suspended

On 9 November 2009, The Engineer reported that refining was to be suspended at the Teesside refinery. Petroplus CEO Jean-Paul Vettier was quoted as saying: "Given the current unfavorable market environment and capital expenditures required to maintain refinery operations at Teesside, we have decided to suspend refinery operations. The site will continue to operate as a terminal and storage facility." On 24 January 2012 it was announced that Petroplus would file for

insolvency In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company ( debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet ...

, which led to the closure of

Coryton Refinery Coryton Refinery was an oil refinery in Essex, England, on the estuary of the River Thames from central London, between Shell Haven Creek and Hole Haven Creek, which separates Canvey Island from the mainland. It was a part of the Port of Lond ...

. Teesside closed shortly afterwards and was bought by Greenergy in July 2012, reopening as a diesel, gasoil and kerosene supply depot in November 2012.Greenergy purchases terminal assets at Teesside

References