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The UK government has called for an investigation into the owners of the Lindsey Oil Refinery after the facility fell into insolvency.
The refinery in north-east England, which was bought by the privately owned Prax Group in 2021, filed for insolvency over the weekend, a UK government spokesman said on Monday.
Lindsey processed about 96,600 barrels of oil a day in 2024, and about 400 people are employed at the site on the banks of the river Humber. An official receiver has been appointed as liquidator. Employees remain in place and continue to be paid.
Its plunge into insolvency is the latest blow to the UK’s beleaguered refining industry, after rival Ineos stopped refining crude oil at its facility in Grangemouth, Scotland, meaning Britain will have only four refineries left.
The UK government said Lindsey had lost about £75mn since Prax acquired the facility from TotalEnergies of France in 2021, and that the company had been “unable” to answer questions from the government about its finances.
Michael Shanks, UK energy minister, said there had been “long-standing issues” with the refinery, and that the secretary of state was to call for an investigation into directors’ behaviour around the insolvency. “The company has left the government with very little time to act,” he said.
Privately held Prax was founded by chief executive and chair Sanjeev Kumar Soosaipillai in 1999. Soosaipillai started with a single petrol station near St Albans and has grown the business into a sprawling conglomerate including refineries in the UK and South Africa, a network of petrol stations and a trading business. Soosaipillai’s family owns 100 per cent of the group, according to a person familiar with the company.
Like other European refineries, Lindsey had been struggling commercially for some time, the person said. Rather than run the refinery as a standalone 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 a deal signed last year. Glencore declined to comment.
