US refining companies Marathon Petroleum Corporation (Marathon) and CVR Energy (CVR) are set to bring their new pre-treatment facilities online later this year, Biodiesel Magazine reported.
During an announcement of its second quarter earnings on 1 August, Marathon said it expected feedstock pre-treatment facilities at the Martinez Renewable Fuels facility in California to come online during the second half of this year, the report on the same day said.
The new facility was expected to have the capacity to produce 730M gallons/year (2.7bn litres/year) by the end of 2023, Biofuels Magazine wrote.
Developed in partnership with Finnish renewable fuels producer Neste, the Martinez project reached full Phase I production capacity of 260M gallons/year (984M litres/year) during the first quarter of this year and Phase II activities to add the pretreatment unit and boost capacity were underway, the report said.
Once Phase II was complete, the facility would be one of the country’s largest renewable diesel facilities, Marathon president and CEO Mike Hennigan was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile, CVR’s feedstock pre-treatment unit (PTU) at its Wynnewood refinery in Oklahoma was expected to become operational later this year, Biofuels Magazine wrote on 1 August.
While announcing the company’s second quarter earnings on 31 July, CVR said it was also holding discussions with potential partners to develop an additional renewable fuels project, which could include sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) capacity.
The renewable diesel unit at the Wynnewood refinery continued to increase production during the second quarter, with total vegetable oil throughputs for the three-month period at approximately 17.8M gallons (67.3M litres), down from 22.4M gallons (84.7M litres) in the first quarter due to a planned catalyst change, CVR was quoted as saying.
CVR Energy CEO David Lamp was quoted as saying the company had switched catalyst providers with the most recent change and – to date – was seeing an increase in renewable diesel yields.
Third quarter throughput for the renewable diesel unit was expected to be in the range of 17M-22M gallons (64.3M-83.2M litres), according to CVR chief financial officer Dane Neumann.
Although construction of the feedstock PTU was ongoing, delays in equipment delivery, had moved the expected date of operation forward from the third quarter of this year to the fourth quarter, Lamp said.
CVR was also continuing to explore the possibility of adding renewable capacity to its Coffeyville refining complex in Coffeyville, Kansas, according to the report.
During the second quarter earnings announcement, Lamp said the company had been in preliminary discussions with various parties on the possibility of partnering on a renewable diesel project with an option for SAF at the Coffeyville complex. CVR was currently considering a significantly larger project than it had developed at Wynnewood, he added.
