Page 12 - EurOil Week 26 2021

EurOil ENERGY TRANSITION EurOil

Preem tests renewable gasoline

at Lysekil refinery

SWEDEN SWEDISH oil refiner Preem has finished the to come into force at the end of this month.
first tests to produce renewable gasoline from Preem began producing renewable diesel at
Preem began producing sawdust at its 220,000 barrel per day (bpd) refin- Lysekil in November last year, using crude oil
renewable iesel at ery in Lysekil, it said last week. combined with 5% rapeseed oil to produce die-
Lysekil in November After the coronavirus (COVID-19) pan- sel rated as environmental class 1. The refinery
last year. demic further weakened the outlook for motor is anticipated to produce 40% renewable fuels
fuels in Europe, some refiners have resorted to when Preem’s upgrades are complete.
switching their plants to produce green fuels, The Swedish company’s 106,000 bpd refin-
in hope of securing government subsidies and ery in Gothenburg can already produce up to
business with climate-conscious consumers. 85% renewable fuels, following the upgrade of
Preem plans to process an initial 300,000 a hydrotreater unit. Preem is striving to produce
tonnes of pyrolysis oil at the Lyseil refinery and 5mn cubic metres of renewable fuels annually by
use a further 50,000 tonnes over the next two the end of the decade, lowering its CO2 emis-
years from this autumn, sourced from Swedish sions by around 12mn tonnes.
bio-oil producer Pyrocell, which it jointly owns Preem has shifted the focus to green invest-
with Swedish timber group Setra. Pyrocell pro- ments from more conventional projects. In Sep-
duces this oil from sawdust at its plant in Gavle, tember last year it axed a $1.65bn plan to build a
Sweden, adjacent to Setra’s Kastet sawmill. residue oil conversion complex at Lysekil. It con-
“Residual products from our Swedish forests cluded that “the economic logic of investment in
have a unique potential to make Sweden self-suf- this project no longer stands,” amid the fallout
ficient in an increasing share of liquid renewable from the pandemic.
fuels in the long run,” Preem’s head of sustainable Several other European refiners are pursu-
development, Peter Abrahamsson, commented. ing a similar trajectory. TotalEnergies, formerly
Biowaste from forestry industries like saw- Total, closed its 93,000 bpd Grandpuits refinery
dust is categorised as advanced feedstock in the near Paris late last year and plans to convert it
EU’s revised Renewable Energy Directive (RED fully to biofuels production. Italy’s Eni is consid-
II). Demand for feedstock in this category is ering a similar option for its 84,000 bpd Livorno
expected to grow as the EU targets them having refinery, and in May Finland’s Neste began test-
a 3.5% share of the market by 2030. RED II is due ing renewable gasoline. ™

P12 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 26 01•July•2021