Strategic Biofuels lets contract for Louisiana renewable fuel project

Strategic Biofuels LLC has let a contract to Hunt, Guillot & Associates LLC (HGA) to deliver integrated project management team (IPMT) services for subsidiary Louisiana Green Fuels LLC’s (LGF) grassroots biorefinery and adjacent bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) power plant under development on a 327-acre site at the Port of Columbia in northeast Louisiana’s Caldwell Parish, about 25 miles south of Monroe (OGJ Online, Sept. 22, 2023).

As part of the professional services agreement awarded in late March, the HGA IPMT team will act as a technical partner to help lead the project through front-end engineering and design (FEED) to final investment decision (FID), HGA said.

Should Strategic Biofuels take positive FID on the LGF project, HGA said it will continue supporting the development in the role of owner’s engineer, providing a wide range of professional services to take the project through full engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning, and start-up.

This latest contract for the proposed LGF complex follows Tokyo-based Sumitomo Corp. subsidiary Sumitomo Corp. of Americas’ (SCOA) entering an partnership agreement with Strategic Biofuels in early February to help jointly develop the project (OGJ Online, Feb. 9, 2024).

Upon announcing the SCOA partnership, Strategic Biofuels also revealed it would shift LGF’s primary renewable fuel product to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from an originally planned mix of renewable diesel and renewable naphtha to help meet rising demand from the commercial aviation industry on its path to decarbonization.

Once completed, the project would produce about 640 million gal/year of renewable fuels.

Alongside enabling lower emissions from the aviation sector, LGF’s shift to SAF production will also further reduce the operator’s carbon footprint.

To achieve anticipated carbon reductions scheduled to begin in 2029, the LGF plant will use:

• About 1 million tonnes/year (tpy) of regionally sourced forestry waste as the biorefinery’s feedstock.
• Green energy from an integrated biomass-fired power plant that will take nearly 1 million tpy of sawmill waste annually to produce 86 Mw of power.
• Geologic carbon sequestration of 1.36 million tpy of carbon dioxide (CO₂) produced from the combined BECC to create an SAF product that will equate to removing nearly 300,000 passenger cars from the road.

LGF is currently still awaiting issuance of Class VI permits for CO₂ geologic sequestration at the project site from the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources.