MOSCOW (MRC) -- Total is set to start up a biodiesel refinery using palm oil whose planned launch last summer sparked opposition from farmers producing vegetable oil and from environmental activists, reported Reuters.
The refinery in La Mede in southern France will begin production in two weeks, Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne told journalists on the sidelines of the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting last Wednesday.
"Operationally the project is starting," he said.
The start-up of the 500,000 tons-per-year refinery has been delayed several times.
Farmers expressed concern about palm oil competing with locally produced vegetable oil and environmental activists cited the deforestation caused in producing it.
Palm oil cultivation results in excessive deforestation and its use in transport fuel should be phased out, the European Commission concluded in February, although it granted some exemptions production by smallholdings or on unused land.
Total, which has invested around 200 million euros (USD223 million) to convert the loss-making crude refining unit to biodiesel, hopes those exemptions help convince France to overturn its plan to end subsidies for adding palm oil to diesel.
"We can have a refinery that is competitive," Pouyanne said. If the French law is not changed, La Mede will not be competitive with its European peers," he said.
Total has committed to using less than 300,000 tons of crude palm oil per year at La Mede out of a total of 650,000 tons, with the rest coming from oils from other plants, recycled animal fat, cooking oil and industrial oil.
As MRC wrote before, in December 2017, Total inaugurated the new units at its Antwerp integrated refining & petrochemicals platform, which havdprogressively started up in the previous few months.
Total S.A. is a French multinational oil and gas company and one of the six "Supermajor" oil companies in the world with business in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. The company's petrochemical products cover two main groups: base chemicals and the consumer polymers (polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene) that are derived from them.
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