UK supermajor BP is making steady progress with plans to produce renewable fuels and green hydrogen at a former oil refinery site in Kwinana, Western Australia.
Speaking at an Energy Club WA event this week in Perth, Justin Nash, senior manager City & Corporate Integrated Solutions at BP, told delegates that the company would be approaching the front-end engineering and design phase of the project within months.BP first flagged plans in September to repurpose the 65-year-old oil refinery to help decarbonise Western Australia’s largest industrial cluster.
BP intends to use the site, which is currently being used as a fuel import terminal, to use waste based feedstock to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and hydrogenated vegetable oil, otherwise known as renewable diesel.
“This waste based feedstock will include things like tallow, animal fat, and used cooking oil that is sustainably sourced and certified,” Nash explained.
To produce these fuels will also need a source of hydrogen, and that will largely be generated from the pre-processing of these waste based feedstocks that will provide us some biogas to generate the hydrogen.”
Renewable fuels demand
BP claims renewable fuels can deliver carbon emission reductions of up to 90% over fossil fuels, and the UK energy giant is considering similar plants at locations around the globe, however, Nash highlights that the Kwinana site is the only such facility BP is considering in a country that does not have a renewables fuel mandate.
Despite the lack of a mandate, BP believes it has identified demand for the lower emissions fuel within Australia.
“The future demand for renewable fuels is the transport sector, particularly heavy transport operators and miners that have a need to decarbonise with an interim solution before new technology is developed,” Nash explained.
“Aviation, one of the hardest to abate sectors, particularly when you consider long haul flights, and there’s a bunch of long haul flights from Australia.
“There’s a bunch of rail that connects across this country, it’s generally using diesel, so there’s an opportunity there to decarbonise. And then finally, with Kwinana, the opportunity for marine bunkering displacing current diesel to produce and use lower emission products.
BP has also partnered with the world’s largest infrastructure asset manager, Macquarie Group, to carry out a feasibility study into the potential to integrate green hydrogen production at the Kwinana site. ” upstream - link - Josh Lewis - link - more like this (Australia) - link - more like this - link
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