A flare has been seen burning from Fawley refinery.

The flare began burning at around 6pm yesterday evening. 

Only four days ago, ExxonMobil warned residents it would need to use its flares to restart one of its units over the weekend.

Flares are part of the refinery's safety system, normally used to burn excess gas.

Occasionally, they are used when a unit promptly needs to be shut down.

Annita McCurdy, process manager at ExxonMobil, said: "I want to directly apologise for any noise disturbance caused by the essential work conducted on our site over the weekend.

"As we communicated in advance, this was associated with the re-start of a major process unit – our Cat Catalyst Unit.

"The process requires us to use our flares into which we inject steam to help ensure that the flare is not smoky. Unfortunately, it is this process that caused the increase in noise.

"We had anticipated the completion of the re-start during Saturday, but it took us slightly longer to bring the unit up to its operating temperatures and throughput.

"While we had to maintain the controlled use of the flares during this time, our team worked hard to manage the volume of steam to help reduce noise where possible. We exited the flares at around 11am yesterday.

"Once again, we are sorry for any disturbance caused to your weekend and we will take away any learnings that will help us reduce impact in the future."