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The United Kingdom government has requested an investigation into the owners of the Lindsey oil refinery after the installation fell into insolvency, putting hundreds of jobs at risk.
The refinery in the northeast of England, owned by the Private Prax Group since 2021, requested insolvency during the weekend, a spokesman for the United Kingdom government said Monday.
The installation processed around 96,600 barrels of oil per day in 2024 from the site on the Humber River, where around 400 people are used. These workers remained in their place and continued to be paid, the newly appointed administrator Teneo said on Monday.
The fall of Lindsey in insolvency is the last blow for the besieged oil refining industry of the United Kingdom, after its ineos rival stopped refining the crude oil in its facilities in Grangemouth, Scotland, which means that Great Britain will have only four remaining refineries.
In addition to the insolvency of Lindsey, the Prax Group matrix entity, State Oil Limited, had entered the administration, together with the subsidiaries involved in the Prax Petroleum, Harvest Energy and Harvest Energy Aviation, Harvest Aviation, Harvest Aviation, Harvest Aviation, said administrator.
The United Kingdom government said that Lindsey had lost around £ 75 million since Prax acquired the installation of Totalgies of France in 2021, and that the company had been “unable” to answer government questions about their finances.
Downing Street said that Lindsey owners have disappointed “workers” and that the government would support staff “during this difficult period.”
He also said that Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds had written to the insolvency service to demand “an immediate investigation into the conduct of the directors and the circumstances surrounding this insolvency.”
A spokesman for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the company had “left the government with very little time to act.”
The Minister of Energy, Michael Shanks, told Parliament on Monday night that the government was committed to the refinery sector and would consider support for refineries such as helping with energy law.
He asked the “rich owner” of the refinery to “put his hands in his pockets and deliver adequate compensation for the workers.”
Private Prax was founded in 1999 by the Executive Director and President Sanjeev Kumar Soosaipillai with a single service station near St Albans.
It has become an expanding conglomerate that includes refineries in the United Kingdom and South Africa, a network of service stations and a commercial business. The Soosaipillai family has 100 percent of the group, according to a person familiar with the company.
Lindsey had been fighting commercially for some time, said the person. Instead of executing the refinery as an independent company, Soosaipillai has tended to use cross group guarantees to help finance its operations, leaving other parts of the company exposed to the insolvency process, the person added.
The Lindsey refinery is supplied with crude oil by Glencore, under an agreement signed last year. Glencore said that “he continued working with key stakeholders in efforts to support a safe and responsible result of the refinery.”
Teneo said he was exploring a possible sale of parts of the broader group that remain outside the administration procedures, such as their approximately 200 service stations in the United Kingdom and the hundreds more than operates throughout Europe.
Clare Boardman, Joint Administrator, added: “We appreciate that this is a very difficult and uncertain moment for employees and all involved. We will be in the place to support them during this challenging period.”
Unite, the largest union in Great Britain, said that the oil and gas industry of the United Kingdom had been placed in a “cliff” by policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
“The government needs a short -term strategy to keep Lindsey operating and a long -term sustainable plan to completely protect all oil and gas workers,” said Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite.
