Oil giant Essar Oil UK (EOUK) is in talks with HMRC to extend the time it has to pay off what is left of a £770m VAT tax bill from earlier this year. Essar Oil has already paid off £547m in deferred VAT payments but still has £220m left to pay.

Essar Oil has already entered an arrangement with the tax authority, like many other multinational companies, when it joined the government’s VAT tax deferral scheme during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Companies which have used the scheme have until January 2022 to pay off the remainder of their tax debts, but Essar Oil is in talks to extend this deadline.