BP progressing with engineering plans for refinery conversion in Western Australia

Roger Cook, deputy premier of Western Australia, visited the BP Kwinana site Feb. 17. (Photo: Roger Cook via LinkedIn)

BP announced Feb. 17 that plans to convert its idled Kwinana refinery to produce renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) are progressing.

In February 2022, Biobased Diesel Daily reported that BP was licensing Honeywell UOP’s Ecofining™ technology for the conversion.

This month, Frédéric Baudry, president of BP Australia and senior vice president of fuels and low-carbon solutions in the Asia-Pacific region, said, “Kwinana illustrates the power of the Australian economy and its ability to reinvent itself for the energy transition. This project is the first of its kind globally for BP and a first for Australia. It recognizes the importance of our Kwinana site and Western Australia in the energy transition, so we’re thrilled to say BP is progressing with engineering plans for Kwinana. We plan to integrate the sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel with our current terminal operations, and our future potential green hydrogen project—H2Kwinana.”

Kwinana is one of five biofuel projects that BP has planned globally in the multibillion-dollar effort to decarbonize.

It is expected that these projects will produce around 2.1 million gallons per day of SAF and renewable diesel by 2030.

The Kwinana site is expected to produce around 420,000 gallons a day.

Start-up of the converted Kwinana refinery is planned for 2026.

Roger Cook, deputy premier of Western Australia, visited the site Feb. 17.

“Spent the morning in my neck of the woods welcoming the latest milestone for BP’s $1 billion Kwinana Renewable Fuels project,” Cook stated on social media. “The … project has reached the front-end engineering design milestone, which is the step before making a final-investment decision, hopefully later this year. … [The project] will complement the site’s existing import terminal operations and integrate with BP’s plans for green-hydrogen production, which are currently being assessed in a feasibility study.”

In 2020, BP announced it was ceasing refining operations at its Kwinana site and converting it into a fuel-import terminal.