The owner of the Lindsey oil refinery at Immingham, UK, has crashed into insolvency, putting hundreds of jobs at risk. Prax Group’s parent company, Sate Oil, has called in administrators amid mounting losses at the refinery. 420 employees at the refinery are at risk, though Unite the Union said this figure could be up to 1,000 when taking into account contractors and the wider supply chain.
‘The Lindsey oil refinery is strategically important and the government must intervene immediately to protect workers and fuel supplies,’ says Sharon Graham, Unite’s general secretary. ‘Unite has constantly warned the government that its policies have placed the oil industry on a cliff edge. It has failed to act and instead put its fingers in its ears.’ The blow to the UK’s industry comes just weeks after the announced cessation of Grangemouth refinery.
According to Prax, the refinery has an annual production capacity of 5.4 million tonnes, processing more than 20 different types of crude. Prax purchased the site from Total in 2020, and is understood to have be a financial drain across the wider Prax group.
Michael Shanks, the UK’s energy minister, said workers had been ‘badly let down’ and the government was demanding ‘an immediate investigation into the conduct of the directors and the circumstances surrounding this insolvency’.
Teneo has been appointed as administrator for State Oil, which employs 182 staff and owns 190 petrol stations in the UK, external, along with 325 others in Europe. Clare Boardman, from Teneo, said administrators would be ‘considering all options for the group, including the prospect of a sale for the group’s upstream business and retail operations in the UK and Europe, all of which remain outside of insolvency’.
