US oil, gas and petrochemicals group ExxonMobil is considering plans to spend more than £1 billion to upgrade its refinery at Fawley in the UK, according to a report in trade journal Chemical Week quoting Oil Price Information Service (OPIS), both part of information group, IHS. The refinery currently has a crude processing capacity of 270,000 bbl/d.

The money would be spent on overhauling the refinery’s catalytic cracker during 2018, as well as building up to two new plants at the site in 2019, according to sources. At least one of the new plants could be a chemical facility. ExxonMobil currently produces refinery-grade propylene, methyl ethyl ketone, higher olefins and butyl rubber at Fawley.

If it proceeds, the project would be the largest refinery upgrade in the UK in monetary terms. ExxonMobil has not commented on or confirmed the proposed investment.

The project would follow a $35 million investment at Fawley this year to build a plant for Isopar isoparaffinic fluids, which was completed in June. ExxonMobil announced in March that it intended to continue expanding its global hydrocarbon fluid assets in order to meet strong global demand growth.

The company is currently adding more than 250,000 t/y at plants in Antwerp, Belgium; Baytown, Texas, USA and Jurong Island, Singapore. The additional capacity will be fully online by early 2019 and will help ExxonMobil produce higher volumes of its Exxsol series of differentiated fluids as well as a broader portfolio of hydrocarbon fluids such as Isopar and Solvesso.