Three of the five new tanks at Valero’s Avonmouth terminal
Following the completion of its multi-million pound expansion, Valero’s Avonmouth fuel terminal is now delivering all fuel grades to customers in the South West. Capacity has been tripled, with kerosene and gasoil added to the range of Valero products available and increased storage capacity for gasoline and diesel.
Valero’s vice president product supply, Mike Lewis, said: “It’s rare for a UK terminal to see such investment to expand capacity. We’ve now brought Avonmouth in line with our other terminals, making it a very modern facility that will supply all fuel grades and deliver a much more reliable service for our customers.
“It comes on the back of investments we’ve made at our other UK terminals since Valero entered the UK market in 2011,” Lewis added. As well as reopening Manchester Terminal in 2013, Valero has also made significant improvements at its other terminals, including Kingsbury and Cardiff. Amongst these are improved rack systems and controls, and the upgrading of ethanol blending systems.
Valero’s Avonmouth Terminal is now fully open for all grades, and receives fuel products directly from its oil refinery in Pembroke, South Wales.www.Valero.com
Students of Archers Brook school in Ellesmere Port were delighted to receive a £3,000 donation from Essar at Stanlow
Students at Archers Brook SEMH Residential School Charitable Trust in Ellesmere Port were delighted to receive a £3,000 donation from Essar at Stanlow recently as a result of the refinery achieving a record breaking safety target of three million hours without a recordable injury – a first in the site’s 60 year history.
Essar’s Let’s Give programme, which links safety milestones and charitable giving, recognised this significant achievement by donating to three charities: STEPS, Archers Brook, and The Liverpool Seafarers Centre.
The school community offers quality support for children and young people with a range of complex social, emotional and behavioural difficulties often linked with medical conditions such as ADHD or complex communication needs associated with ASD.
June Sedgwick, business manager at Archers Brook commented: “The trustees, staff and pupils of Archers Brook are very grateful to Essar for this wonderful donation. Each week different classes have a personal and social development trip to build their confidence, form friendships and help develop many life skills. This money will be used to help equip these trips, by purchasing mountain bikes for the newly formed group of key stage two pupils, as well as much needed outdoor education clothing for the entire age range of students.”www.essar.com/
INEOS Shale, the onshore division of INEOS Upstream, has completed the acquisition of the entire UK onshore petroleum exploration and development licence interests of ENGIE E&P UK Limited, increasing the total acreage held by INEOS under licence to more than 1.2 million acres.
The transaction involves minority interests in 15 licences, seven of which INEOS holds an existing interest in. The remaining eight complement the company’s existing licence interests in Yorkshire, Cheshire and the East Midlands. Three of the licences are operated by INEOS, eight by IGas Energy and four by Cuadrilla.
http://www.ineos.com/
Table of Licences acquired
The partially built Talisman steam road locomotive at the Shrewsbury Steam Rally
An ambitious project to recreate a classic steam engine from the early 20th century has been given a massive boost after the man leading the project tracked down and bought a collection of the original parts.
Alex Sharphouse and a small team of enthusiasts are building Talisman, a Fowler B6 Big Lion Road locomotive completely from scratch, with support from Shrewsbury-based Morris Lubricants, one of Britain’s leading independent oil blenders.
The welcome funding from Morris Lubricants helped him get the project off the ground. “We are proud to be associated with Morris Lubricants, a company with such history and style and their support comes from the heart,” he said.
“The link-up with Morris is fantastic because they have been in business for nearly 150 years and produce high quality products, including oil for steam engines.”
Morris Lubricants’ managing director, Andrew Goddard, said: “Helping Alex to acquire these original Talisman parts has helped the project gain a lot of provenance. He’s still going to have to make a lot of the engine from scratch but the parts that have been retrieved will be used, which makes it a partial restoration. We can’t wait to see it operational and would love to use it on a Morris Lubricants roadshow in the future.”
Morris Lubricants has been manufacturing lubricants in Shrewsbury since 1869 and is new recognised as one of Europe’s leading oil blenders and marketers, with a reputation for quality and service. The company offers an extensive range of performance lubricants covering a wide variety of application areas, from steam engines to modern-day commercial vehicles and industrial machinery.
Puma Energy, the global integrated midstream and downstream energy company has released its audited full year results for the period ended 31 December 2016, with record sales volumes increasing by around 16%.
Commenting on these results, Pierre Eladari, CEO, said that he was pleased to announce “another significant year for Puma”, in which the company had realised an overall growth of 12%. “I was also pleased to see the business model responding to a sustained period of organic growth across the business segments and regions with the completion of the integration of UK activities acquired in 2015, growth in the Americas driven by the retail segment and good operating performance in retail and aviation across all regions.”
Certas Energy has retained Manchester-based creative agency Lda, to overhaul and develop the company’s digital business-to-business, consumer and staff network presence.
Certas Energy supplies billions of litres of fuel in the UK each year and employs 2,500 people. Its digital marketing manager, Michelle Kay, explains the complications of building a digital presence for an organisation of this scale: “With so many stakeholders involved and so many aspects to the core build, we needed an agile development process that could handle regular updates, improvements and changes.
“In an industry that never stands still, this is particularly important, and so during the build phase we need the flexibility to adapt as requirements change. We also, where possible, need to future-proof the core technical specification to cope with inevitable evolution.”
She concludes: “We are at the beginning of our development roadmap and already we are impressed by Lda’s partnership approach. They are taking us through each step in a manageable and transparent way, and involving all stakeholders in a truly collaborative way.”
https://www.certasenergy.co.uk/
Adler & Allan has appointed Ian Osborne as new group managing director to continue the group’s drive in growth following an extremely successful period of increased demand, business acquisitions and sales.
“INEOS is a unique business”, says founder and chairman, Jim Ratcliffe
Last month INEOS announced that it had achieved ‘a record breaking profit of 4.3 billion euros of EBITDA last year’. It’s a figure only rivalled by the very biggest names in the industry. The group is also repaying 1.2 billion of euros from its cash resources.
INEOS Group has also just closed its latest debt financing and repricing. This included raising 1.4 billion euros of new loans and repricing 3 billion euros of existing debt. The new borrowings will save the group over 100 million euros a year and were oversubscribed by 50%, showing the credit market’s strong confidence in the company.
“These figures confirm that INEOS is doing better than ever,” said Jim Ratcliffe, INEOS founder and chairman.
“All the businesses are performing well and our successful refinancing shows that the market is clearly recognising this fact.”
INEOS is composed of 27 businesses, organised into six main groups. INEOS Group is the largest of these clusters with Styrolution, INOVYN, Enterprises, O&P (UK) and O&P (South) making up the rest. Even the smallest of these businesses has a billion-euro turnover and is a substantial undertaking in its own right “We’ve spent the last three months working on a comprehensive cross border finance package including euro and dollar borrowings,” said finance director John Reece.
“I am pleased to say that we’ve achieved better terms across the board, saving the company 100 million euros annually and pushing out debt maturities until 2022 at the earliest”. This follows equally successful refinancings of our Inovyn and Styrolution businesses in 2016.”
The new borrowing also includes a “step down” facility whereby the repayment costs will be reduced if the company meets certain financial targets.
“INEOS is a unique business, “ added Jim Ratcliffe.
“We only set it up eighteen years ago, and it has never floated. It’s a tribute to everyone involved – owners, management and staff – that it is now doing so well.”www.ineos.com
Bob Dudley will open SPE Offshore Europe. Held biennially in Aberdeen since 1973, it is the largest E&P conference and exhibition outside North America
BP group chief executive Bob Dudley will underline the value of the North Sea in the oil major’s global portfolio when he leads the opening plenary session at SPE Offshore Europe 2017 being held in Aberdeen from 5-8 September 2017.
Dudley, who calls BP’s UK North Sea business one of its “crown jewels”, will address the hundreds of delegates expected to attend the opening plenary session at Europe’s foremost exploration and production (E&P) technical conference and exhibition. Other senior level plenary speakers will be announced in due course.
BP expects to bring two of the largest new developments in the North Sea – the Quad 204 redevelopment and the new Clair Ridge project – into production over the next year or so, as well as continuing to invest in other North Sea assets. Over the same period, BP plans to participate in five exploration wells in the region and in around 50 new development wells over the next three years. BP’s North Sea production output is expected to double from 2015 levels to 200,000 barrels of oil a day by 2020.
Conference chair Catherine MacGregor, president, reservoir characterisation group, Schlumberger, commented: “As one of the most eminent figures in our industry, Bob Dudley will provide an inspirational scene-setter under the conference theme Embracing New Realities: Reinventing our Industry. Bob’s insight will kick-start OE2017 as we encourage the industry to think beyond cost efficiency and embrace new technologies, new types of business models and collaborations that will lead to sustainable ways of working.”
New for 2017 will be a Decommissioning Zone with a themed exhibition and conference space with over 40 decommissioning technology and service providers.www.offshore-europe.co.uk
Iran’s crude exports have doubled in five years
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VV is used by the world’s leading commercial and investment banks, private equity, investment and hedge funds, shipowners and operators, lawyers, accountants, brokers, underwriters and more.
“Our senior analyst William Bennett has put together an overview of where Iranian crude is currently trading,” writes VV’s associate director Claudia Norrgren.
“With the loosening of Iranian sanctions last year, there has been a marked increase in the seaborne demand for Iranian crude exports.
“However, nothing is certain, and with new sanctions on Iran announced on 3rd February 2017, tensions are high. The question is can Iran keep increasing their exports?www.vesselsvalue.com
