Manchester Airport to take up fuel shortage issue with Essar Oil

Airport ran out of jet fuel on Wednesday
London, June 7:  
Manchester Airport officials said they would be looking into what went wrong, after the busy international airport in the north of England ran out of fuel supplies on Wednesday following problems with supplies from Essar Oil UK's Stanlow refinery in north west England.
A spokesperson for the airport said they would be taking the matter up with Essar, as well as the fuel supplier, the Manchester Airport Storage and Hydrant Company. While a disruption to fuel supplies had occurred in 2008, never before had the airport run short, the spokesperson said, coming at a particularly busy time for the airport, at the end of a four-day weekend to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
“It was certainly not ideal as it happened during the big bank holiday weekend.” They added, “We have had a direct fuel supply since the late 1960s and this is the first time this had happened.”
Supplies were affected from around 8.30 a.m. on Wednesday, with the airport running out of fuel completely around 5.15 p.m. The airport had been warned that supplies would be disrupted because of a “quality problem” with supplies due from Stanlow. It is understood that the disruption occurred following the discovery of problems with a single batch of fuel.
The busy airport typically uses 3 million litres of jet fuel a day – the equivalent of around 80 tanker loads. The majority of the fuel comes from the Essar refinery. The airport normally holds around 80 per cent of its usage in reserve to cover disruptions, but that figure had fallen to less than 50 per cent because of the extra traffic.
The airport spokesperson said that travel disruption had been kept to a minimum with some 13 flights delayed on Thursday and no cancellations, and that stocks had been replenished by 8.30 a.m. local time that day.
Jet fuel production was back to normal at Stanlow, Essar Energy had confirmed late on Wednesday.
Essar Energy completed the takeover of Royal Dutch Shell's Stanlow refinery in August last year, a move the company said at the time gave it the double advantage of a foothold in Europe's refining market, and the potential to bring product from Vadinar.
In addition to Manchester, it supplies Liverpool and East Midland's airports with fuel, though it is not their main supplier.
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