Site Preparation and Initial Construction Underway at US$560 Million Project
ExxonMobil affiliate Imperial Oil is planning to invest about US$560 million to build Canada’s largest renewable diesel production facility.
The project at Imperial’s Strathcona refinery, located on the outskirts of Edmonton in the province of Alberta, is expected to produce 20,000 barrels per day of renewable diesel primarily from locally-grown, plant-based feedstocks.
As part of the manufacturing process, the project, slated for start-up in 2025, will use blue hydrogen produced from natural gas and carbon capture and storage, or CSS. The hydrogen will be supplied by Air Products, with additional deals for bio-feedstock supplies expected to be signed with other third parties.
The hydrogen and bio-feedstock will be combined with a proprietary catalyst to make premium low-emission diesel fuel, with output helping to cut CO2 emissions in Canada’s transport sector by some 3 million tonnes per year, ExxonMobil said.
Site preparation and initial construction activities are already underway, it added.
“The Strathcona project is another example of how we are investing in advantaged facilities and applying our leading technology and decades of experience to develop lower-emission solutions for customers,” said Karen McKee, president of ExxonMobil Product Solutions.
“We continue to focus investments on markets like Canada, where well-designed policies support technologies that reduce life-cycle emissions.”
The facility is part of ExxonMobil’s plans through 2027 to invest about US$17 billion in lower-emission initiatives.
The energy major also announced at the end of January it had awarded a front-end engineering and design, or FEED, contract to Technip Energies for the world’s largest low-carbon hydrogen facility, located in Baytown, Texas.
The plant, slated to come online in 2027-2028, would have a production capacity of one billion cubic feet per day, making it the largest low-carbon hydrogen project in the world. A final investment decision is expected to be taken in 2024.
ExxonMobil, Air Products and Technip Energies are members of the Breakbulk Global Shipper Network, a worldwide group of shippers involved in the engineering, manufacturing and production of project cargo.
PHOTO CREDIT: ExxonMobil
