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£500m Investment In Forties Pipeline System To Come

INEOS, one of the biggest manufacturing companies in the world, has announced that it is set to invest £1 billion in projects in the UK, including £500 million in the Forties Pipeline System (FPS), which is intended to extend its life by at least 20 years, well into the 2040s.

The funding is to be used to overhaul the reliability of the pipeline system, as well as implementing the latest technology and modernising its environmental systems.

The FPS itself was opened back in 1975, a strategic asset in the UK that is able to transport up to 600,000 barrels of North Sea oil onshore for refining on a daily basis. The pipeline transports 40 per cent of the country’s oil and gas to the mainland.

The company is also planning on investing £150 million in Hull to build a new vinyl acetate monomer plant to bring production of an important raw material back to the UK.

Commenting on the announcement, INEOS FPS CEO Andrew Gardner said: “North Sea oil and gas producers are telling us that they want to be in the North Sea well into the 2040s so we are making this commitment to be there with them. Following acquisition of FPS in 2017 we are now embarking on a period of investment that will guarantee that the system can support them for decades to come.”

At the start of the year, INEOS also announced it would be making a €3 billion investment in Antwerp for an ethane gas cracker and world-scale propane dehydrogenation unit in Europe, the biggest investment in the continent’s chemicals sector to have been seen in 20 years.

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