Situated on the River Tees in North East England, the refinery is wholly owned by Petroplus, who purchased it from ICI and Phillips Petroleum in 2000.

On 5 November 2009, Petroplus announced that refining operations would cease because of unfavourable market conditions but the storage and terminal facilities would continue to operate.

Dating back to the early 1960s, the plant was originally conceived to supply ICI with naptha feedstock for its Teeside chemical complex and to utilise North African crude for Phillips. With the development of North Sea oil, it switched to processesing Norwegian Ekofisk crude oil. Over the years capacity was increased by the debottlenecking of distillation capacity and the addition of an HDS unit to produce ultra low sulphur diesel.

Facts and figures
Refining capacity: 5.5 million tonnes per year

Product output:
Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel and Bio-diesel
Kerosene & Gas oil
Petrochemical feedstocks