Global refiners in 2022 maintained investments in projects aimed at preparing their conventional oil refining operations for a low-carbon future in line with the global energy transition. Alongside increasing efforts to add renewable fuels production via conversion or modification of existing assets, operators also expanded plans to build grassroots renewable plants, mostly for production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Other refiners, however, continued to focus on rationalizing conventional crude processing capacities through divestments or permanent closures.
This year’s worldwide refining report highlights major projects in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific intended to increase capacity for renewable fuels production and decarbonize current operations as refiners diversify their portfolios to meet commitments for achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner.
Results of OGJ’s annual refinery survey will be published separately in early 2023 (see accompanying box).
Europe
As regional targets for a net-zero future continued trending ahead of the broader 2050 global goal, European refiners advanced multiple projects to expand production of renewable fuels that included components for renewable hydrogen production and carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage (CCS).
In Italy, Eni SPA has launched a feasibility study to evaluate the potential of building a new biorefinery at the operator’s existing 84,000-b/d refinery in Livorno, Tuscany, on the country’s northwestern coast (Fig. 1). The study will examine construction of three new plants for production of hydrogenated biofuel as part of Eni’s plan to secure the site’s future as a production and employment hub, increase availability of decarbonized products, and help meet its corporate goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The Livorno transformation project—which would initially involve locating a new biorefinery inside the existing conventional refinery—specifically would include construction of:
- A biogenic feedstock pretreatment unit to transform waste raw materials, residues, and waste resulting from the processing of vegetable products and oils from crops that do not compete with the food chain into renewable feedstock.
- A 500,000-tonnes/year (tpy) plant for production of SAF based on the Eni-Honeywell UOP LLC codeveloped proprietary Ecofining process technology.
- A plant for producing hydrogen from methane gas.
With design of the three new Livorno plants scheduled for completion by 2023, construction on the biorefining project could be under way by 2025.
If approved, the Livorno biorefinery would become Eni’s third refinery-to-renewables location following transformations of its former 80,000-b/d Venice refinery at Porto Marghera, Italy, and 105,000-b/d Gela refinery on the southern coast of Sicily into biorefineries in 2014 and 2019, respectively. Eni most recently started SAF production via coprocessing of used cooking oils (UCO) with conventional crude at its 104,000-b/d Taranto refinery in southeast Italy.
In France, TotalEnergies SE entered an agreement with Saria AS GMBH & Co. KG to partner on SAF production as part of the operator’s Project Galaxie repurposing of its 101,000-b/d Grandpuits refinery at Seine-et-Marne near Melun in northern France, which intends to convert the site into a zero-crude industrial platform by 2025. TotalEnergies will take 50% ownership in SARIA’s conversion of animal fat esters into eligible feedstock to support production of SAF at the Grandpuits zero-crude platform, boosting the site’s proposed SAF capacity to 210,000 tpy, 25% higher than initially planned for the conversion project. SARIA—which will take an equivalent stake in the Grandpuits biorefinery business—will supply UCO as SAF feedstock for the project, with TotalEnergies to remain as operator. The companies said the planned strategic partnership reinforces conversion of the Grandpuits site into a zero-crude platform specifically oriented towards SAF, which is the most efficient solution to immediately reduce CO2 emissions from air transportation.
Already under way, TotalEnergies’ more than €500-million Project Galaxie includes construction of a new biorefinery that will use UOP Ecofining technology to process what initially was planned to be 400,000 tpy of mostly animal fats from Europe and UCO. Feedstock will be supplemented with other vegetable oils like rapeseed but excluding palm oil, primarily from local suppliers, to produce 170,000 tpy of SAF, 120,000 tpy of renewable diesel, and 50,000 tpy of renewable naphtha for production of bioplastics.
TotalEnergies—which discontinued crude oil refining at Grandpuits in first-quarter 2021 and will cease storage of petroleum products at the site by late 2023—said it expects to commission new units at Grandpuits in 2022-24 to reach full operation of the zero-crude platform by 2025. Already supplying SAF to French aircraft operators since 2021, TotalEnergies also recently began producing SAF at its 253,000-b/d integrated Normandy refining and petrochemicals platform in Gonfreville l’Orcher, France.
In its latest Sustainability & Climate 2022 Progress Report published March 2022, TotalEnergies also confirmed it is developing pilot units near its 227,000-b/d Leuna refinery in central Germany to make molecules that can be converted into methanol and SAF using green hydrogen and captured CO2. Launched in June 2021, the e-CO2Met pilot project entails capturing of CO2 from the refinery’s emissions and production of hydrogen using renewable energy via a 1-Mw electric high-temperature electrolyzer, which provides greater efficiency than more frequently used low-temperature electrolyzers. Produced hydrogen will then react with the captured CO2 to produce cleaner, lower-carbon synthetic fuel. While TotalEnergies did not reveal a timeframe for duration of the program, the operator said it anticipates an energy efficiency gain of around 30% across the pilot units’ production chain.
In the Netherlands, Neste Corp. let a contract to Technip Energies NV to deliver a suite of services for a project to expand production capacity of renewable fuels at the operator’s refinery at the Port of Rotterdam. Technip Energies—which also is participating in Neste’s ongoing €1.4-billion, 1-million tpy expansion of SAF production at its 1.3-million tpy renewable diesel refinery in Singapore—will provide engineering, procurement services, and construction management (EPsCm) on the Rotterdam project, which will increase the refinery’s overall renewable production capacity by 1.3 million tpy.
Scheduled for startup during first-half 2026, the €1.9-billion Rotterdam refinery expansion will boost Neste’s current 1.4-million tpy renewable product capacity at the refinery to 2.7 million tpy, of which 1.2 million tpy will be SAF production based on the operator’s proprietary NEXBTL technology, which allows flexible refining of a wide range of lower-quality renewable waste and residues into finished renewable diesel, SAF, and feedstock for polymers and chemicals.
Once operable, Neste’s Rotterdam expansion—together with the Singapore SAF expansion and the company’s pending joint venture with Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC) at Martinez, Calif. (see below)— will increase its 3.3-million tpy global production capacity for renewable fuels to 6.8 million tpy by yearend 2026.
Nearby, Gunvor Petroleum Rotterdam BV (GPR), a subsidiary of Gunvor Group Ltd., Geneva, let a contract to McDermott International Ltd. to provide a front-end engineering design (FEED) services for a proposed green hydrogen import terminal project at GPR’s 149-hectacre site at the Port of Rotterdam, which houses the operator’s 75,000-b/d fuels-finishing refinery and supporting product distribution network (Fig. 2). McDermott-owned CB&I will deliver FEED on the project’s ammonia tank and associated inside battery limits (ISBL) equipment, with supporting FEED activities to be provided directly by McDermott for an interconnecting pipeline, tie-ins, and other outside battery limits (OSBL) installations. The FEED contract also covers development of a project execution cost estimate as basis for a potential conversion into an engineering, construction, and procurement (EPC) contract for project implementation.
Award of the FEED contract comes in the wake of GPR’s late-June 2022 signing of a joint development agreement with Air Products Inc. to cooperate on the Rotterdam import terminal that would receive shipments of green ammonia from Air Products and its global partners for conversion into green hydrogen to help the European Union (EU) meet accelerating demand for greenhouse gas (GHG)-reducing energy sources in line with the global energy transition and climate targets.
GPR and Air Products plan to reach final investment decision (FID) on the proposed import terminal projects as they gain confidence in the regulatory framework, permitting process, and funding support, including assurance that the imported green ammonia and resulting green hydrogen would be recognized and counted towards EU renewable energy targets.
The Rotterdam green hydrogen terminal project—one of several Air Products hopes to develop across the EU—also is seeking to be recognized by the European Commission as an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), which would qualify the private-sector project for additional funding from EU member states. Pending positive FID, the proposed Rotterdam import terminal would begin providing green hydrogen to the Netherlands in 2026, with distribution to other EU markets—including Germany and Belgium—to follow.
Undertaken through Gunvor’s Nyera division established in 2020 to manage the company’s planned non-fossil fuel investments of at least $500 million during the next 3 years, the co-development plan with Air Products comes as part of GPR’s larger transformation of its Rotterdam operations to advance sustainable and renewable energy initiatives at the site.
Purchased from Kuwait Petroleum Europoort BV in 2016, Gunvor shuttered GPR’s two crude distillation units (CDU) in late 2020, ceasing crude processing at the former 83,600-b/d conventional refinery entirely to accommodate changing market and environmental conditions. Since closure of the CDUs, GPR has focused Rotterdam refining operations on desulfurization of high-sulfur products and the production of gasoline, drastically reducing the site’s Scope 1 emissions of CO2. As part of its Rotterdam transformation, GPR also is developing new processes around hydrogen and coprocessing of vegetable oil. Gunvor also has confirmed subsidiary Gunvor Raffinerie Ingolstadt GMBH (GRI) will undertake focused projects in the coming years on the fluid catalytic cracker (FCC), heating systems, and exchangers to further improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions at its 110,000-b/d refinery in Ingolstadt, Germany, about 80 km north of Munich.
In September 2022, Gunvor said GRI was nearing completion of detailed engineering for its Modern Ingolstadt Emissions Reduction Via Amine (MINERVA) project, which aims to reduce the refinery’s sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions to meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements. Initiated in spring 2020, GRI’s MINERVA project entails construction of a regenerative flue-gas desulfurization plant to treat exhaust gas streams from the refinery’s existing FCC and Claus sulfur recovery unit (SRU).
To be equipped with a selected but yet-to-be-revealed technology, the new plant will separate SO2 from the flue gas for subsequent conversion into elementary sulfur in the SRU, transforming emissions into a usable raw material for industry and reducing the site’s solids waste, wastewater streams, and feed resource requirements. With FEED, technology licensing, permitting, and equipment orders already completed and detailed design now nearing completion, Gunvor said it expects to commission MINERVA in fourth-quarter 2023.
Transformation of its Rotterdam and Ingolstadt refineries follows Gunvor’s October 2020 mothballing of subsidiary Gunvor Petroleum Antwerpen NV’s (GPA) 107,500-b/d refinery near the Berendrecht and Zandvliet locks in the northern part of Belgium’s Port of Antwerp due to the site’s lack of economic viability amid ongoing adverse macroeconomic effects on the European refining sector. Gunvor said in September 2022 that GPR’s Rotterdam and GPA’s Antwerp sites—the latter of which continues to maintain terminal operations that include 1.1 million cu m of storage capacity—will still contribute to the company’s transition towards greener fuels, especially for the shipping industry.
In Norway, Orbit Origo AS subsidiary Biojet AS let a contract to KBR Inc. to deliver a concept study for the operator’s proposed project to build a renewable fuels production plant in Ringerike. KBR will provide technology evaluations, early engineering, and project development for the plant, which will be designed to convert a feedstock of forestry residues into renewable and sustainable green fuels as part of Biojet’s plan to supply the European market with renewable fuels by 2026.
Biojet anticipates commercial production to begin in 2025 at a site to be built in Follum, Norway. Biojet’s announcement of the proposed project follows ExxonMobil Corp.’s acquisition of a 49.9% ownership interest in the Norwegian biofuels producer in January 2022 as part of the global company’s broader effort to deliver lower-emission fuels and products to the transportation sector in line with its intention to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
ExxonMobil said it will be able to use its access at the site of subsidiary Esso Norge AS’ recently shuttered 116,000-b/d refinery at the port of Slagen—now a fuel import terminal—to efficiently distribute biofuels throughout Norway, as well as to countries across northwest Europe. Esso Norge quietly announced its decision to halt refining operations at Slagen and convert the site into a fuel import terminal in a release posted to the ExxonMobil subsidiary’s website Apr. 27, 2021. The operator said the refinery’s closure resulted from its inability to remain economically viable over the long term amid increasingly difficult market conditions, including strong competition, evolving regulatory measures, and falling demand, the latter of which has led to an oversupplied market.
In the UK, Houston-based Phillips 66 Co. continued to advance what could become the first ever industrial-scale carbon capture project to be executed within a refining plant at subsidiary Phillips 66 Ltd.’s 221,000-b/d Humber refinery in the Immingham industrial hub on the south bank of the Humber Estuary, North Lincolnshire, on England’s eastern coast.
Undertaken as part of a more than £1-billion first phase of the UK government-backed Humber Zero decarbonization project the refiner is jointly developing with partner VPI Immingham LLP—a subsidiary of Rotterdam-based Vitol Group that operates an adjacent combined heat and power plant (CHP)—Phillips 66 will leverage proprietary post-combustion carbon capture (PCC) technology from Shell PLC’s Shell Catalysts & Technologies (SC&T) to retrofit one of the refinery’s major processing units. The project also proposes construction of a carbon capture plant.
Under development and coordinated by a joint management team of Phillips 66 and VPI as a platform for demonstrating critical deep-decarbonization technologies on an industrial and commercial scale, Humber Zero’s initial phase focuses on the CCS components of an industrial decarbonization strategy required to achieve the UK government’s ambition of capturing 20-30 million tpy of CO2 by 2030 and more than 50 million tpy by 2035. As such, the project is cast as part of meeting the country’s 2050 net-zero target, while also enabling industry to remain competitive in an increasingly low-carbon world.
In 2021, UK Research & Innovation—the largest public funder of research and innovation through the UK Industrial Decarbonization Challenge—awarded match funding of £12.5 million to Phillips 66 and VPI to develop conceptual and FEED for the initial £25-million phase of Humber Zero projects. The projects will target carbon capture starting in 2026 to reach a rate of 3.8 million tpy by 2027.
Worley Ltd. won the FEED contracts and expects to complete its work for the CHP by third-quarter 2023 and for the refinery by yearend 2023. This first suite of projects will involve retrofitting SC&T’s Cansolv CO2 PCC technology to existing equipment where gases produced from combustion are emitted. These units include the Humber refinery’s FCC unit and two combined-cycle gas turbine (CCGT) trains as well as two auxiliary boiler stacks at VPI’s CHP. The proposed projects also will include construction of carbon capture plants at each of the sites, both of which will be integrated with the retrofitted units. Scheduled for start of construction in 2023, these projects will result in 500,000 tpy of abated CO2 emissions from the refinery and 3.3 million tpy from the CHP, according to the companies.
A future phase of Humber Zero aims to produce hydrogen at scale—both for immediate use as well as fuel switching from natural gas to hydrogen—to further decarbonize the Immingham industrial site and meet Humber Zero’s long-term goal of transforming it into a CCS and hydrogen hub equipped to provide cost-effective decarbonized energy to surrounding industry by 2040. Fully executed, the broader £1.2-billion Humber Zero program would reduce overall CO2 emissions from the Humber region by as much as 8 million tpy by 2030.
North America
Canadian and US refiners in 2022 announced additional plans to add or modify existing capacity to produce renewable fuels and unveiled new projects involving construction of grassroots plants dedicated to producing renewable and low-carbon fuels.
ExxonMobil’s majority-owned affiliate Imperial Oil Ltd. let a contract to Fluor Corp. to provide a suite of engineering services for the operator’s proposed grassroots renewable diesel production complex to be built at the 196,000-b/d Strathcona refinery near Edmonton, Alta., in western Canada. Fluor will use a modular-based execution approach to deliver FEED, engineering, and procurement (EP) services for the project, including design and integration of the new renewable diesel unit. The contract also covers integration of utility tie-ins, electrical and control systems, and associated commodity storage, and loading and unloading structures.
Imperial also contracted Air Products for long-term supply of low-carbon blue hydrogen—or hydrogen produced from natural gas with CCS technology—to support the project, which will combine the blue hydrogen with locally sourced renewable feedstocks and a proprietary catalyst to produce more than 1 billion l./year (roughly 20,000 b/d) of low-carbon, renewable diesel to reduce GHG emissions from Canada’s transportation sector by about 3 million tpy, or the equivalent of removing more than 650,000 passenger vehicles/year from the road. With Imperial scheduled to take FID on the project by yearend 2022, the proposed complex—if approved—could begin production in 2024.
Elsewhere in the region, Federated Co-operatives Ltd. (FCL) let a contract to Topsøe AS for licensing of its proprietary HydroFlex process technology for a grassroots plant designed to produce low-carbon renewable diesel at its 130,000-b/d Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC) in Regina, Sask., Canada. The proposed plant—which will process canola oil into 15,000 b/d of renewable diesel—comes as part of the larger integrated agriculture complex (IAC) planned by FCL’s joint venture with AGT Food and Ingredients Inc. (AGT Foods), which will include a canola-crushing plant. If approved, the new renewable diesel plant is scheduled to enter production in 2027.
FCL formed its partnership with AGT Foods in early 2022 via an MOU under which FCL (51%) and AGT Foods (49%) plan to build the IAC as part of the operators’ shared goals of decarbonizing the Western Canadian economy while supporting regional crop production. As part of the MOU, the IAC’s $360-million canola crushing plant will supply about 50% of required feedstock for the proposed renewable diesel complex, which will source its remaining plant-based feedstock requirements from other regional canola crushing plants.
Alongside its $2-billion investment in construction of the IAC, FCL also signed an MOU with Whitecap Resources Inc. under which FCL plans to fund, build, and operate plants at the CRC and Co-op Ethanol Complex (CEC) near Belle Plaine, Sask., to capture nearly 500,000 tpy of CO2 emissions for transport, storage, and use at the nearby Whitecap-operated Weyburn unit, currently the world’s largest carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) project. FCL said it expects carbon capture at CEC to begin in 2024, with startup of carbon capture at CRC to follow in 2026.
In early 2022, Dallas-based private equity firm Cresta Fund Management’s Braya Renewable Fuels appointed a senior leadership team to oversee the operator’s ongoing conversion of the 130,000-b/d refinery—formerly owned and operated by NARL Refining LP—at Come-by-Chance, Newf., into a production hub for renewable diesel and SAF. Cresta in late-November 2021 acquired controlling interest in the refinery from New York-based investment management firm Silverpeak after production at the site halted in 2020 amid the global pandemic. Supported by the government of Newfoundland and Labrador—which in January 2021 entered into a funding agreement with NARL Refining to keep the refinery in warm-idle mode while Silverpeak pursued the sale to Cresta—construction on the conventional-to-renewables conversion was already under way as of late 2021. Scheduled to begin commercial operation by yearend 2022, the first phase of the newly converted refinery is to produce 18,000 b/d of renewable diesel and SAF, with a second phase of the project to double production capacity to about 36,000 b/d.
In April 2022, Refuel Energy Inc. let a contract to Topsøe to license its proprietary HydroFlex and H2bridge technologies for a grassroots, standalone renewable fuels production plant in southern Ontario, Canada. The proposed 3,000-b/d plant will process a feedstock mix that includes waste fats, oils, and greases—such as regionally-sourced UCO, animal fats, and nonedible crop oils—into SAF and renewable diesel. To be known as Refuel YYZ, the proposed project—which could lower CO2 emissions for end users by up to 80%—would supply its SAF and renewable diesel production to meet demand in the Greater Toronto area, as well as be available for potential export into markets in the northeastern US. Refuel Energy also let a contract to Fluor Corp. to provide FEED services and EPCM support for the Refuel YYZ project. Scheduled for FID in 2023, Refuel YYZ, if approved, would begin commercial production in 2025.
In the US, USA BioEnergy LLC, Scottsdale, Ariz., selected Bon Wier, Newton County, Tex., for construction of the first of its 12 planned advanced biorefineries for production of SAF, renewable diesel, and renewable naphtha from a feedstock of wood waste sourced from East Texas forests. Selected for its location based on economic incentives offered by Texas state and local governments, the proposed Bon Wier renewable fuels production plant—to be operated by USA BioEnergy subsidiary Texas Renewable Fuels (TRF)—will also be equipped with CCS to support the growing US market for sustainable and renewable fuels as well as the operator’s commitment to deliver 100 million gal/year of SAF to Los Angeles International Airport in line with the global energy transition.
First announced in mid-February 2022, the proposed $1.7-billion Bon Wier plant will convert 1 million green tons/year of sustainably sourced wood waste into 34 million gal/year of ultralow-sulfur transportation fuels that, in addition to SAF and renewable diesel, include renewable naphtha for use as a gasoline blendstock. A green ton is equivalent to 2,000 lb of fresh-cut biomass, or woody material, that includes moisture content. The plant’s production of renewable fuels—which can be used as a direct replacement for and reduce CO2 emissions by about 80% from conventional fossil-based fuels—additionally will qualify for the highest levels of federal and state credits under the Renewable Fuel Standard’s (RFS) Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) and California low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) programs, respectively, the operator said. The Bon Wier plant’s first 34-million gal/year phase is scheduled for completion by late 2025. Plans also are already under way for a future expansion that would double the biorefinery’s output to 68 million gal/year. A timeline for completion of the plant’s proposed second phase has yet to be revealed.
In October 2022, Prairie Energy Partners LLC, a subsidiary of Southern Rock Energy Partners LLC, El Campo, Tex., said it was selecting the site for its proposed grassroots, full-conversion, decarbonized refinery to process US-produced light, sweet conventional and shale crudes into low-carbon transportation fuels. The planned $5.56-billion refinery will be sited in either Victoria County, Tex., or Payne and Lincoln County, Okla.
To be built on a relatively small 400-acre footprint, the proposed plant would be equipped to process West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and sweet shale crudes sourced from Eagle Ford, Permian, DJ, and Bakken basins into 91.25 million bbl/year of clean finished products, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The proposed decarbonized refining complex also would be outfitted with technologies and processes capable of eliminating 95% of GHG emissions and reducing water production and consumption by 90%, with 80% of waste water further recycled and repurposed. Unlike most conventional refineries that power process heating units with natural gas, Prairie Energy Partners’ planned refinery would instead combine pure oxygen with blue hydrogen (produced from refinery offgases) and green hydrogen (from electrolysis) to yield a primary waste stream of steam.
In addition to including an associated CCS system for its hydrogen complex, the planned refinery would be powered by 100% renewable electricity, either sourced from the grid or generated on site from recycled and repurposed waste heat or geothermal and solar assets. Pending FID and necessary permitting, Prairie Energy Partners intends to break ground on the project in 2023 for anticipated startup of the refining complex in 2025.
In an August 2022 update to its original May 2022 application filed with Bloomington Independent School District of Victoria, Tex., for potential tax reductions on the project, Prairie said the 250,000-b/d decarbonized refinery would include the following major installations:
- Crude distillation unit consisting of two 125,000-b/d process trains.
- Naphtha, diesel hydrotreaters.
- Isomerization units.
- Continuous catalytic reformers (CCR).
- Hydrocrackers.
- Renewable diesel unit.
- Autothermal reforming (ATR)-based hydrogen complex and associated CCS complex.
- Water, waste-water production and recycling complex.
- On site renewable-electricity production.
In mid-2022, Chevron Corp. completed its purchase of Iowa-based Renewable Energy Group Inc. (REG) for $3.15 billion as part of the global operator’s broader aim to grow its renewable fuels production capacity to 100,000 b/d by 2030, as well as bring additional feedstock supplies and pretreatment infrastructure into its system. REG is working to complete a 250-million gal/year expansion and improvement project now under way at its existing 90-million gal/year renewable diesel refinery in Geismar, Ascension Parish, La. Estimated at an overall cost of about $950 million, the Geismar improvement and expansion project remains on schedule to reach mechanical completion by 2023, with full commissioning of the expanded plant to follow in 2024.
Fuel produced at REG’s expanded Geismar plant will reduce CO2 emissions by up to 2.8 million tpy.
Elsewhere, MPC took FID and continues its project to strategically reposition its now-idled Martinez refinery in northern California’s San Francisco Bay area into a renewable-fuels production site. The first phase of the Martinez Renewable Fuels (MRF) project—which, once operable, would bring nearly 50,000 b/d [260 million gal/year] of renewable diesel supply into the market—is currently targeted for mechanical completion by yearend 2022. With proposed pretreatment capabilities at Martinez anticipated for startup during second-half 2023, MPC—which finalized a 50-50 JV partnership on the $1.2-billion MRF with Neste in September 2022—said it currently expects the refinery to reach full nameplate production capacity of 730 million gal/year by yearend 2023.
Phillips 66 Co. in 2022 also reached positive FID to move forward with its Rodeo Renewed project to permanently cease processing crude oil at its 120,000-b/d San Francisco refining complex in Rodeo, Calif., and convert the plant into a renewable-fuels refinery. Scheduled to begin commercial operations in first-quarter 2024, the proposed $850-million project includes construction of new pretreatment units and the repurposing of existing hydrocracking units to enable production of renewable fuels from a feedstock of waste oils, fats, greases, and vegetable oils the site will secure from local, US domestic, and international sources.
Rodeo Renewed initially will produce 800 million gal/year—or more than 50,000 b/d—of renewable diesel, renewable gasoline, and SAF to help meet rising market demand for reduced-carbon transportation fuels in California and elsewhere. The operator completed startup of a first leg of renewable diesel production in July 2021 from one of the Rodeo refinery’s repurposed hydrocracking units using Topsøe’s HydroFlex technology. Rodeo Renewed will add about 55,000 b/d of renewable diesel, renewable gasoline, and SAF production to the refinery’s existing 12,000-b/d renewable diesel capacity for an overall post-project renewable fuels production of 67,000 b/d.
Asia Pacific
The first confirmed projects for proposed capacity additions dedicated to renewable fuel production in Australia and China also emerged during 2022.
Sherdar Australia Bio Refinery Pty. Ltd., a specialty company of privately held TransAsia Minerals Ltd., said it plans to develop Australia’s first renewable diesel processing and storage plant. Once in operation, the renewable fuels refinery will be equipped to produce 500,000 tpy of renewable diesel and SAF using Shell proprietary hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) process technology. While an exact location remains forthcoming, the operator said the proposed $600-million project will be sited on more than 20 hectares located close to adequate port infrastructure to enable exports to the US and Europe. Feedstock for the refinery will include a wide range of animal fat, seed oil, and waste greases. Sherdar confirmed final stages of engineering, governmental discussions, and receiving relevant approvals for the project were nearing completion but has yet to reveal a definitive timeline for the project.
On Australia’s western coast, bp plc let a contract to Honeywell UOP to license its UOP-Eni SPA codeveloped proprietary Ecofining technology to revamp conventional and underutilized hydroprocessing equipment as part of the pre-FEED phase for a proposed 10,000-b/d renewable diesel and SAF project at the operator’s former refinery in Kwinana, south of Perth. Still under development and aligned with bp’s broader goal of becoming a net-zero company by 2050, the planned renewable diesel and SAF project would be integrated with the operator’s existing terminal operations at Kwinana to leverage existing infrastructure, including former refining, storage, and distribution assets.
The proposed project also is part of bp’s plan to develop an integrated clean energy hub at Kwinana. The renewables project follows bp’s late-2020 decision to shutter Kwinana refining operations and convert the site into a fuel import terminal.
In China, Oriental Energy Co. Ltd. also let a contract to Honeywell UOP for licensing of the Ecofining process to outfit a 1-million tpy grassroots SAF plant the operator will build in Maoming, Guangdong Province. Intended to help Oriental Energy meet rising SAF demand as well as support China’s goals of reducing CO2 emissions to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, the two-unit SAF plant will be built in two phases, with each to include one UOP Ecofining unit for production of SAF from a feedstock of UCO and animal fats.
Slated to become one of the world’s largest sites for SAF production using UCO and animal fat feeds, the plant will produce Honeywell Green Jet Fuel, a renewable jet fuel that can be blended up to 50% with petroleum-based jet fuel without requiring any changes to aircraft technology and meeting all critical specifications for flight.