Lindsey oil refinery owner Prax falls into administration as ministers urged to intervene

The Guardian

2 days ago

One of the UK's largest oil refineries – and the only big one owned by a British company – has collapsed into administration, prompting calls for the government to intervene urgently to protect fuel supplies and jobs.
State Oil, which owns the Prax Lindsey refinery in north Lincolnshire, called in administrators on Monday, Sky News reported first, prompting concern from the trade union, Unite.
The failure is likely to cause a headache for government officials, given that the company's 5.4m tonne-a-year capacity represents nearly a tenth of the national total. About 180 people work at State Oil, and 440 more are employed at the Prax Lindsey refinery, according to Sky.
State Oil is part of the Prax Group, which is majority owned by the seldom-seen husband and wife team Winston and Arani Soosaipillai, who bought the company from the French oil group Total in 2021. A further 20% is held by family trusts connected to them.
Prax Lindsey is the only one of the UK's five leading oil refineries to have a UK owner; the remainder have US and Indian parent companies.
The group also has oilfield investments in Shetland and owns roughly 200 petrol stations in the UK under the Breeze and Harvest Energy brands, but these are outside the insolvency process.
The City consultancies FTI Consulting and Teneo have been appointed by the government's official receiver to manage the Lindsey refinery and as administrator, respectively.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, said: 'The Lindsey oil refinery is strategically important, and the government must intervene immediately to protect workers and fuel supplies.
'Unite has constantly warned the government that its policies have placed the oil and industry on a cliff edge. It has failed to act and instead put its fingers in its ears.
'The government needs a short-term strategy to keep Lindsey operating and a sustainable long-term plan to fully protect all oil and gas workers.'
The administrator of the company, Teneo, said: 'On 30 June 2025, the high court appointed the official receiver as liquidator [and] appointed special managers from FTI Consulting LLP to assist the liquidator in ensuring the continued safe operation of the site.'
Joint administrator Clare Boardman, of Teneo, said that all options would be considered, including a sale of Prax's upstream business and retail operations in the UK and Europe, all of which remain outside insolvency.
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Prax's upstream business consists of the Lancaster oilfield in the British North Sea, a geologically complex project which has been in an early production phase for years.
It is the second time in four years that Prax Lindsey's financial performance has become a matter for government officials.
In 2021, the company said it had swung from a £1.9m profit to a £228m loss in the year to February 2021, hurt by the Covid pandemic crushing demand for fuel.
That year, the French oil company Total sold the refinery to Prax, a unit of a little-known outfit headquartered in Surrey called State Oil, which has grown at meteoric pace, its revenues surging nearly tenfold between 2010 and 2020.
Its controlling party, Winston Soosaipillai, who goes by his middle names of Sanjeev Kumar, is rarely spotted in public or at industry events and has almost no public profile.
The Guardian has approached the Prax Group and FTI Consulting for comment.