(Calgary) Imperial Oil said Thursday it has approved a $720 million investment to build a renewable diesel facility at its Strathcona refinery near Edmonton.
The project, first announced in August 2021, is expected to produce 20,000 barrels per day of renewable diesel when complete.
This will make it the largest facility of its type in Canada, upon its scheduled completion in 2025, and one of the largest renewable diesel complexes in North America.
“We consider ourselves world class. When you look around the world, there aren’t many (renewable diesel) plants at 20,000 barrels per day or more,” Imperial’s vice president for downstream, Jon Wetmore, during an interview.
Renewable diesel is the term given to a biomass-based fuel that is chemically equivalent to petroleum diesel. This means it can be transported directly through pipelines or sold at gas stations without any changes to infrastructure or fuel blending.
Renewable diesel can be made from vegetable oil, animal fats, used cooking oil or even algae. In the case of Imperial, the Strathcona refinery will use local vegetable oils, such as canola, soybean and sunflower oil.
Imperial will also partner with US-based Air Products, based in Pennsylvania, which is building a hydrogen facility near Edmonton, to supply hydrogen by pipeline to the Strathcona refinery. Low-carbon hydrogen will also be used in the production of renewable diesel.
As a non-fossil fuel product, the renewable diesel produced at Imperial’s plant is expected to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by about three million tonnes compared to conventional fuels, the company calculated. company.
A significant portion of Strathcona’s renewable diesel production will be sent to British Columbia to support the province’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Imperial also intends to use renewable diesel in its operations as part of its emissions reduction plans.
The project should create around 600 direct jobs in the construction sector, the oil company estimated.
A favorable reception
Federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson welcomed Imperial’s announcement, referring to “a great day for Alberta, Canada and especially workers” in a comment posted on Twitter.
“This investment will create and support jobs, reduce emissions and ensure Canada’s economic prosperity,” he continued.
The news was also welcomed by the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank, which called it a “positive announcement”.
The Pembina Institute, like other environmental organizations, has criticized Canada’s oil sands industry over the past year for its failure to move quickly with its decarbonization plans in a time of high commodity prices and high profits. records for oil companies.
Imperial, for example, announced that its profit for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 had more than doubled compared to the same period a year earlier, totaling 2.03 billion – an impressive figure which was used as ammunition by critics who believe that the company and its peers can afford to invest more in environmental initiatives.
Imperial is also a member of the New Pathways Alliance, a consortium of oil and gas companies that have committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Among the group’s proposals is a massive carbon capture and storage network. carbon in northern Alberta, although a final investment decision for this project has not yet been made.
Jan Gorski, director of the Pembina Institute’s oil and gas program, said to thrive in a carbon-neutral world, Canadian energy companies must diversify away from fossil fuels, while reducing the carbon footprint of their production. oil and natural gas production.
Imperial’s renewable diesel announcement falls into that first category, Gorski said.
“It’s a perfect example of that,” he said. But we are still waiting to see investments in reducing emissions from their existing operations. »