Teesside Refinery

---

title: "Teesside Refinery" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["conocophillips", "oil-refineries-in-the-united-kingdom", "river-tees"] description: "Oil refinery and chemical plant in River Tees, County Durham" topic_path: "geography/united-kingdom" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teesside_Refinery" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Oil refinery and chemical plant in River Tees, County Durham ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox oil refinery"]

Field	Value
name	Teesside Refinery
image	Greatham Tank Farm - geograph.org.uk - 1376885.jpg
image alt
caption	Tank Farm at Greatham
location_map	County Durham
coordinates
country	England, United Kingdom
province	County Durham
city	Seaton Carew, Hartlepool
owner	Petroplus
founded
closure
::

| name = Teesside Refinery | image = Greatham Tank Farm - geograph.org.uk - 1376885.jpg | image alt = | caption = Tank Farm at Greatham | location_map = County Durham | location_map_width = | location_map_text = | coordinates = | coordinates_ref = | country = England, United Kingdom | province = County Durham | city = Seaton Carew, Hartlepool | operator = | owner = Petroplus | founded = | closure = | capacity = | capacity bbl/d = | employees = | ref units = | oil tank = | oil refining center = The Teesside Refinery was an oil refinery 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. 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 on the River Tees, thanks to the Phillips Petroleum's development of the Ekofisk oil field in the North Sea.

In 1980, with the discovery of North Sea gas, a 220 mi pipeline was installed between Ekofisk and Seal Sands on the north shore. 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 307 acre site. Stabilised oil is stored in a 375 acre tank farm at Greatham. A 2 mi 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 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 of less than 24 hours in 30 years.

On site there is a canteen, 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 schemes in the area, and were directly involved in local primary and secondary school education. 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 mudflats of Seal Sands, an area of considerable conservation interest and home to wildfowl and seal colonies.

Awards

The terminal has received numerous Gold Medals and President’s awards from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) over the years. These awards are in recognition of the site’s occupational safety 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, which led to the closure of Coryton Refinery. Teesside closed shortly afterwards and was bought by Greenergy in July 2012, reopening as a diesel, gasoil and kerosene supply depot in November 2012.

References

References

1. Stratton Michael, Barrie Stuart Trinder. (10 Aug 2000). "20th Century Industrial Archaeology". Taylor & Francis.
2. "Teesport". Autostore.
3. [https://archive.today/20120911231251/http://www.theengineer.co.uk/channels/process-engineering/teesside-refinery-to-suspend-operations/313874.article The Engineer, 9 November 2009]
4. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16702584 BBC: Coryton refinery job fears after Petroplus go bankrupt]
5. [http://greenergy.com/News/index.html Greenergy North Tees terminal update: commencement of diesel, gasoil and kerosene supply] {{Webarchive. link. (2014-07-27)
6. [http://greenergy.com/News/index.html Greenergy purchases terminal assets at Teesside] {{Webarchive. link. (2014-07-27)

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::