Petrol price investigation: who owns the UK’s oil refineries?
The UK’s competition watchdog has turned its guns on oil refiners, pointing to the fat margins they are making as part of an investigation into why fuel prices are so high.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it has “found cause for concern in the growing gap between the price of crude oil when it enters refineries, and the wholesale price when it leaves refineries as petrol or diesel”.
The war in Ukraine has exposed the lack of capacity in Europe, where Russia is a refining powerhouse. Increased demand for non-Russian oil has stoked prices elsewhere. Shell this week said it expects its refining profits to jump by as much as $1.2bn (£1bn) this quarter.
About a quarter of petrol and 57% of diesel used for road fuel in the UK in 2021 was imported via refineries overseas. Here are six of the biggest domestic refineries.
This facility at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire directly employs 900 staff and supplies 16% of all road transport fuels. There have been concerns in government over the state of its finances and documents filed at Companies House show that annual losses at the company behind Stanlow, Essar Oil (UK), deepened from $221m to $321m in 2021. Its auditors have raised concerns over the health of the company. Essar is owned by brothers Shashi and Ravi Ruia, the Mumbai tycoons whose empire spans shipping, oil, metals and mining. Their wealth was estimated at $2.2bn by Forbes last year, and the Ruia mansion is said to be one of the five most expensive homes in Delhi.
The refinery is located on the Firth of Forth in Grangemouth, Scotland where refining has taken place since 1919. About 2,000 people are employed at the site including 600 within the refinery itself. It is owned by Petroineos, a joint venture formed in
Read more on theguardian.com
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