Stanlow refinery owner EET Fuels polluted Mersey waterways 58 times in two years

EET Fuels, formerly Essar Oil UK, runs Stanlow in Cheshire — the UK's second-largest refinery, bought from Shell in 2011 for £842m, processing 10 million tonnes of crude a year and producing around 18% of the country's road-transport fuel. Per an October 2026 BBC News report on Environment Agency documents obtained by SourceMaterial, the company this year pleaded guilty to 12 charges of breaching environmental law between 2018 and 2020.

In 2023 and 2024 the refinery exceeded its permitted chemical-release levels hundreds of times; the regulator determined this broke permit conditions 58 times over the two years, which could amount to illegal offences. Cyanide entered waterways at more than eight times permitted levels, oil at more than thirteen times, sulphur dioxide at seven times — into waters feeding the Mersey Estuary, a Site of Special Scientific Interest home to dolphins, dunlins and breeding wading birds.

Two spills stand out. In July 2023 oil-tainted rainwater leaked from the site in an incident the EA classed as 'significant' after a wave of smell complaints; investigations indicated oil had contaminated groundwater, which the company called low-scale and localised to two boreholes. On 12 September 2024 more than a tonne of oil escaped into Thornton Brook over 36 hours and spread into the estuary; the company reported it but took nearly two weeks to estimate the volume, breaching the 24-hour rule.

The 2024 spill sent a drone up to survey more than a mile of oiled river and reedbed with red-listed dunlin foraging nearby, triggered a floating-boom response, and closed local cockle beds for five weeks while the Food Standards Agency tested the water. The Environment Agency has confirmed it is investigating the breaches; EET Fuels says it takes its environmental responsibilities extremely seriously.

Guilty plea on 12 charges (2018–20 breaches); 58 further permit breaches determined for 2023–24; Mersey cockle beds closed five weeks after the 2024 oil spill.

The breaches were not isolated: 58 permit breaches in two years, on top of a guilty plea for 12 charges covering 2018–2020, show a pattern rather than an accident.

The September 2024 spill report was filed but the legally required volume estimate came nearly two weeks late — a separate breach stacked on the spill itself.

Releases hit a protected estuary directly: cyanide at 8x and oil at 13x permitted levels into waters that feed an SSSI.

Local fisheries paid the price — cockle beds closed for five weeks — before regulators had finished testing.

A permit is a ceiling, not a target: repeated exceedances turn a licence to operate into a charge sheet, and each underrported incident compounds the legal exposure.

The Environment Agency is investigating the 2023–24 breaches, which it determined could amount to illegal offences. Natural England flagged ongoing risk to salt-marsh vegetation and bird ingestion after the 2024 spill; the cockle beds were given the all clear after five weeks of testing, though fishers lost access during the closure.