Eni SPA subsidiary Enilive SPA is advancing its previously announced plan to begin production of renewable fuels at the operator’s existing 180,000-b/d Sannazzaro de' Burgondi conventional refinery in Italy’s Pavia province.
On Sept. 23, Eni confirmed Italy’s Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security has approved Enilive’s proposal to convert selected units at the Sannazzaro refinery into a biorefining plant equipped to convert 550,000 tonnes/year (tpy) of renewable feedstocks into hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
Alongside repurposing the Sannazzaro refinery’s second hydrocracking unit (HDC2) for production of HVO and SAF using the Eni-Honeywell UOP LLC codeveloped proprietary Ecofining technology, the proposed project also will involve construction of a grassroots pretreatment unit for biogenic feedstocks of waste and residues.
While the refinery’s current logistics systems will be adapted to support the site’s future renewable production, Eni said Enilive will source hydrogen required for the biorefining plant’s conversion process via infrastructure already in place, Eni said.
With the proposed plant’s authorization phase initiated following Enilive’s earlier filing of an application for the project’s environmental impact assessment, Eni said it expects the Sannazzaro refinery to begin operations in 2028.
The planned conversion and integration of biorefining works at the Sannazzaro site—which is already connected to northern Italy’s aviation fuel supply chain via a pipeline to Milan Malpensa Airport and depots servicing other regional airports—will not impact the refinery’s existing production capacity for conventional fossil-based fuels, the company said.
Eni decarbonization strategy
Addition of renewable fuels production at Sannazzaro comes as Eni’s latest effort under the operator’s long-term plan to continue conversion of its conventional refineries into renewables-based production centers while retaining strategic optionality around remaining traditional capacity.
Forming part of Eni's broader decarbonization strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 in line with the global energy transition, the projects collectively seek to increase Enilive’s current 1.65-million tpy systemwide biorefining capacity to more than 5 million tpy—2 million tpy of which could be SAF—by 2030.
The first global operator to convert two of its conventional refineries into biorefinerie, Eni first began producing biofuels in 2014 by processing vegetable oils and biomass waste into renewable diesel following conversion of the Venice refinery, followed by transformation of the 105,000-b/d Gela refinery on the southern coast of Sicily in 2019.
In addition to the Sannazzaro conversion project, Eni is also progressing on Italy’s northwestern coast with the planned conversion of the idled 84,000-b/d conventional refinery in Livorno, Tuscany, into what will become Italy’s third biorefinery.
Targeted for startup in 2026 with a nameplate production capacity of 500,000 tpy, the Livorno plant will be followed by Eni subsidiary Versalis SPA’s conversion of the Priolo Gargallo steam-cracking plant in eastern Sicily by yearend 2028 into a biorefinery with a nameplate production capacity of 500,000 tpy.
Additional capacity will come from new biorefineries under construction in Malaysia and South Korea, as well as existing production capacity from St. Bernard Renewables LLC—the operator’s 50-50 joint venture with PBF Energy Inc.—which began producing renewable diesel in June 2023 from a 1.1-million tpy biorefinery co-located at PBF Energy subsidiary Chalmette Refining LLC’s 185,000-b/d dual-train coking refinery in Chalmette, St. Bernard Parish, La.
