British refiner Essar Oil plans to build two low-carbon hydrogen plants at its Standlow refinery in northwest England at a cost of 750 million pounds (USD1 billion), according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.

　　The company has submitted planning applications for the project, it said in a statement.

　　If approved, construction of the two so-called “blue hydrogen” plants, where the fuel is produced from natural gas and carbon emissions from its production are captured and stored, will begin at the end of 2022 with output expected to begin from the mid-2020s.

　　As MRC informed earlier, in late September 2019, Essar resumed operations at its cracker in Stanlow, UK with the capacity of 45,000 mt/year of ethylene and 165,000 mt/year of propylene. It was shut on 11 September, 2019, due to the power outage at the site.