Page 30 - FINAL Phillips 66 50 Year Book

The 1970s was a decade of landmarks being consistently achieved for
the Humber Refinery. In 1970, all major units were commissioned. In
1976, following a huge £45 million expansion, number 1 and 2 Cokers
were put into action – an investment which saw the refinery’s output
increase to 130,000 barrels a day. April 1978 brought another first – it
became the first plant to receive oil from Britoil’s Thistle field.

The pride in the voice of George Peters, the first general manager of the
refinery, is hard to miss in this article published in the May/June 1971
edition of Conocoverage. He said: “To be successful, an oil refinery in
the export business must be near good harbour facilities such as we
have at Immingham. Conoco saw this advantage and the planning
authorities welcomed and encouraged us to build on the Humber Bank.
They did not, however, give us ‘carte blanche’ permission. Our new
refinery had to conform to high standards of pollution prevention and
environmental acceptability. Conoco, in designing the refinery, went
much further to prevent pollution than the strict letter of their building
permission demanded.

“Unfortunately like most other large scale highly complex projects,
refineries can have ‘start-up’ problems. They are euphemistically
described as teething troubles and the similarity to a new baby in the
house is often quite striking. I can say that we at the Humber Refinery
were well aware of our problems and everyone worked very hard to solve
them. Even at full design conditions Conoco is continuing to improve the
refinery from every point of view – particularly as a neighbour and as a
local asset.

No.1 and No.2 Coker expansion.