Phillips 66 has a new general manager at the helm, with the US giant once again appointing an engineer turned executive who started their career on the Humber Refinery.
Paul Fursey has taken over from the retiring Darren Cunningham, having first stepped on the leading European site at South Killingholme almost three decades ago. He is excited about the future focus and the role the refinery has in the Net Zero journey and the wider regional economy, and immensely proud to take up the UK lead executive position.
Explaining how his father worked for Exxon in Hampshire, which “ultimately set me on a path towards chemical engineering”, he headed north to Bradford for his university education, joining the refinery as a graduate engineer in September 1994.
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Mr Fursey worked in various roles on the huge plant, in operations, engineering and optimisation, before crossing the Atlantic for the first time in 2011, joining Phillips 66’s corporate head office team in Houston. He returned in 2016 as technical manager, before heading back Stateside in 2019, to take the operations manager role at the company’s Los Angeles refinery, the job he has just vacated.
“I’m proud, privileged and grateful to come back and to take this job on with this organisation,” he said. “It is a company of 14,000, and I’m only the 15th person to do this since we started production in 1969. I’m also the third Brit in a row who also started at the company to take it on.”
Married with three adult children, he has kept his Scunthorpe home since the mid-Nineties, and he is enthused by the overriding agenda as he leads a team of 1,000 directly employed and contracted staff.
“Over recent years we have done a lot in advancing the refinery towards the future,” he said, having played a role in several product streams at early stage that have now blossomed.
“It is the first refinery in the world supplying graphite coke for electric vehicles, the first doing renewable fuels, the first doing development fuels and the first to do a deal with an airline for sustainable aviation fuels. That’s a lot of advancement.
“Under Julian (Stoll) and Darren, it has already been leading the way in changing the scope of the refinery, what we work on and how, creating a refinery for the future. Now I’m picking up the mantle with carbon capture and storage on the Humber Zero project, green hydrogen with Gigastack. There’s also work on reprocessing plastics and tyre pyrolysis is also being explored.
“It is such an exciting time. When people talk about refineries, the focus is petrol, and it may not be apparent they started before the first car was on the road. Refineries produce fuel to provide a solution, and new industries emerge. We innovate over time to provide support, fuel and energy, and it emerges in so many different forms serving needs.”
Back surrounded by many familiar faces in the Newton Building and on the sprawling plant beyond, Mr Fursey added: “It is a family. Many people are working in roles that were here before, who have grown and developed themselves, while new engineers, operators and maintenance teams have joined.”
He is buoyed by the demand for roles too, with apprentice events over-subscribed as the Net Zero challenge and quality of employment continues to resonate.
Then there’s the external challenge too, as he looks to embrace Phllips 66’s position in the regional push to lead the globe in industrial decarbonisation, aware of how there is a competitive element to a collaborative cause. “A lot of the project work only makes sense if you have the financial and policy support behind that government ambition,” he said. “Whether it is with Vitol, Drax or Prax, we have to work together, we have to be a voice together. We need to work with partners and various organisations, like BEIS, like the CBI and other enterprises, to help us with pushing these ideas forward. If industry is not going to collaborate, it is not going to happen.”
Away from the refinery, the Southampton football supporter is a big fan of Formula One, and enjoys DIY, gardening, musical theatre and craft beer.
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