Oil & Gas

BP Australia to Launch Sustainable Aviation Fuel Production

The BP sustainable jet fuel project is expected to cost "hundreds of millions" of dollars, the company's Asia-Pacific vice president of low-carbon solutions Lucy Nation said. File photo: Reuters.

British energy giant BP has converted an Australian oil refinery to produce renewable fuels, and has set a date to launch production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).

Unlike the European Union (EU), Australia has no SAF requirements, but BP plans to be Australia’s first producer of the sustainable fuel from 2025.

The EU last week approved plans to require suppliers to blend a minimum of 2% of SAF into their jet fuel from 2025, rising to 85% in 2050.

The BP project is expected to cost “hundreds of millions” of dollars, the company’s Asia-Pacific vice president of low-carbon solutions, Lucy Nation, said.

BP has not disclosed what volume it plans to produce, but Nation said output would depend on demand as the facility would be able to switch day-to-day between producing SAF and biodiesel.

Its Kwinana plant is in Western Australia, a region dominated by the mining industry where there is heavy demand for diesel for trucks.

“We’re lucky at Kwinana in that we’re able to re-utilise some of the processing equipment, the utilities and we have tanks ready to go,” Nation told a briefing on the sidelines of the Sydney Energy Forum.

Reuters, with additional editing by George Russell

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George Russell

George Russell is a freelance writer and editor based in Hong Kong who has lived in Asia since 1996. His work has been published in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, New York Post, Variety, Forbes and the South China Morning Post.