Humber Refinery

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The Humber Refinery is an oil refinery owned by ConocoPhillips. It is located at South Killingholme, North Lincolnshire in the United Kingdom. It lies virtually on the south bank of the Humber Estuary and processes approximately 221,000 barrels of crude oil per day.

The notable areas of operation include an alkylation plant, the UK's only petroleum coke processing facility including three calcination rotary tunnels. 700,000 tonnes of petroleum coke are produced each year. 70% of the refined oil is for UK use, the rest is exported to mainland Europe.

14,000,000 litres of petrol are produced per day, most of which is loaded onto tanker lorries at Immingham Dock. A purpose-built warehouse on the docks stores the petroleum coke before it is shipped out.

In April 2001, a large explosion occurred on the Saturate Gas Plant area of the site. ConocoPhillips was investigated and subsequently fined £895,000 and ordered to pay £218,854 costs by the Health and Safety Executive for failing to effectively monitor the degradation of the refineries' pipework. The company pleaded guilty to these charges in court and has since implemented a Risk Based Inspection programme.^[1]

Since late 2004, power for both the Humber and Lindsey Oil Refinery (owned by Total), has come from the nearby 730MW Combined Heat and Power Plant, owned by ConocoPhillips. This will be improved to produce 1,180MW from summer 2009.

The refinery's non-destructive testing is carried out by Oceaneering.