MOSCOW (MRC) -- Gov. John Bel Edwards and CEO Paul Schubert of Strategic Biofuels LLC announced that the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Louisiana Green Fuels, plans to develop a renewable diesel plant near the Caldwell Parish seat of Columbia, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Situated on a 171-acre site at the Port of Columbia, the plant would produce up to 32 million gallons of renewable fuel annually through established refinery processes with wood waste as the feedstock.
The company is completing feasibility and financing phases for the project in anticipation of a final investment decision by late 2022.
Through the project, Louisiana Green Fuels would make a capital investment of at least USD700 million. The company would create 76 new direct jobs, with an average annual salary of more than USD68,000, plus benefits. Louisiana Economic Development estimates the project would result in an additional 412 new indirect jobs, for a total of nearly 500 new jobs in Caldwell Parish and the surrounding region. During a 30-month building phase, the project would generate 450 construction jobs.
Strategic Biofuels has raised 85% of its early-stage financing from investors in North Louisiana. In addition to the Columbia renewable diesel refinery, the company envisions the development of additional Louisiana refineries that would target production of renewable aviation fuel, as well as diesel.
Following the final investment decision by Strategic Biofuels, construction of the initial Louisiana Green Fuels refinery in Caldwell Parish would begin at the Port of Columbia and lead to initial plant operations in early to mid-2025.
As MRC reported before, earlier this month, Worley was awarded a front-end engineering services contract by Phillips 66 to convert its San Francisco refinery in Rodeo, California, USA into a renewable fuels-manufacturing facility. The project will reconfigure the refinery and produce up to 650 million gallons per year of renewable transportation fuels from used cooking oils, fats, greases and vegetable oils.
We remind that US-based Phillips 66 remains open to developing another ethane cracker for its Chevron Phillips Chemical (CP Chem) joint venture, the refiner's CEO said in March 2018.
Ethylene and propylene are feedstocks for producing polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP).
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 241,030 tonnes in January 2021 versus 217,890 tonnes a year earlier. Only shipments of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market reached 141,870 tonnes in January 2021 versus 123,520 tonnes a year earlier. Supply of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased.
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