Fawley Refinery Named England's Top Public Water User — SkimNews
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- ExxonMobil's Fawley refinery was named by market operator Mosl as the single largest user of England's public water supply, but ExxonMobil disputed the figures as commercially confidential and Mosl removed its supply-point map and a report from its website during reporting.
- Businesses across England use 2.6bn litres per day from the public water supply — about 30% of total consumption — with two-thirds of that use occurring in water-stressed areas, according to Mosl.
- One in 10 businesses in England are not metered at all, and only 11% of metered businesses have smart meters, meaning regulators have no complete picture of how much water industry actually uses.
- Mosl cannot freely share its business water-use data even with Defra or the Environment Agency and must negotiate a bespoke agreement each time, chief executive Sarah McMath told a House of Lords committee.
- A single UK datacentre uses 219m litres of water per year and keeps a tankered-water supply on standby plus its own borehole as backup — yet trade body Water UK says official water-demand forecasts explicitly exclude datacentre growth.
- Anyone can take up to 20,000 litres per day from a stream, borehole or spring without a licence or reporting, a gap covering an estimated 850,000 people and organisations, mostly farms and rural users.
- England's water companies are losing roughly 2.2bn litres per day through leaking pipes — nearly as much as the 2.6bn litres businesses consume daily from the public supply.
Why it matters: Regulators cannot mandate cuts from businesses they cannot fully measure: 10% of businesses are unmetered, and Mosl's commercial-confidentiality rules mean even Defra and the Environment Agency cannot freely access usage data. With drought covering three-quarters of England, a 219m-litre datacentre flying under official forecasts, and 2.2bn litres lost daily to leaks, households face hosepipe bans while the largest industrial users face no mandatory reduction requirement.
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