Galp Will Invest $426 Million In Biofuels With Mitsui

(CTN News) – As part of its expansion plans at its Sines refinery, the Portuguese oil company Galp on Monday announced it has teamed up with Japan’s Mitsui to invest 400 million euros ($426 million) in a plant to produce biodiesel and biojet fuel from waste at an industrial scale.

As part of the project, Galp and the companies will create a joint venture, which, according to the statement, will be 75 percent owned by Galp and 25 percent owned by the other company.

As part of its announcement, Galp also revealed that it had made a final decision to invest 250 million euros on its own to build a 100 megawatt (MW) electrolyzer unit to produce green hydrogen that will power its refinery.

In a statement, the company said that both plants would begin operating by 2025.

There will be a total capacity of 270,000 metric tons of HVO per year at the Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (HVO) plant.

Using the electrolyser, which will have a capacity of 15,000 metric tons of green hydrogen per year, it will convert waste materials, such as waste cooking oils, into renewable biodiesel and biojet fuel – both of which make up sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

As a result, waste cooking oils will be transformed into renewable and sustainable biodiesel and biojet fuel.

This is an alternative fuel to traditional jet fuel, which has the objective of being more environmentally friendly as they help to replace dirtier petroleum products while making use of waste in a much more useful way.

There is a refinery located south of Lisbon called Sines that is the largest consumer of hydrogen from natural gas in Portugal, even though Galp aims to gradually produce zero-carbon fuel at that refinery by using renewable energy to electrolyze hydrogen.

In a statement, Galp Chairwoman Paula Amorim said in a statement that the two projects are among the largest of their kind in the world.

The decision was taken based on the expectation that the tax and regulatory developments in Portugal will not hamper the success of such a large-scale investment in the country, she added.

The company is committed to speeding up the decarbonisation of its processes and products, and by 2025, it plans to devote around 50 per cent of its capital expenditure to low-carbon activities to achieve this goal.

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