Calumet advances Montana refinery’s renewable diesel project
Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP has received the first shipment of renewable feedstock at subsidiary Calumet Montana Refining LLC’s 30,000-b/d refinery in Great Falls, Mont., where a project currently is underway by fellow subsidiary Montana Renewables LLC to reconfigure an existing conventional hydrocracking plant for production of renewable diesel (OGJ Online, Feb. 23, 2021).
While the conversion project has yet to be completed, Calumet and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte held a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the forthcoming renewables plant on Aug. 19 to celebrate the first rail delivery of seed oil the modified unit will use as feedstock to produce renewable diesel beginning in 2022, Calumet said.
While Calumet did not respond to enquiries from OGJ regarding either the specific type of seed oil delivered or its proposed purpose this far ahead of commissioning, the operator presumably will use the renewable feedstock batch for trial runs at the unit.
The August delivery follows Calumet’s February announcement that it was evaluating the potential reconfiguration of the Great Falls refinery’s oversized 18,000-b/d mild hydrotreater—added in 2016 as part of an expansion project—to process 10,000-12,000 b/d of renewable feedstock into diesel at the lowest capital cost per barrel of any currently proposed industry project of this type.
Officially scheduled to be completed and operational following the Great Falls plant-wide turnaround in April 2022, the renewable diesel plant will have an initial production capacity of 5,000 b/d based on a feedstock of technical tallow and some soybean oil, Calumet said in June and August presentations to investors.
The company plans to eventually process a mix of renewable feedstocks sourced from local farms and ranches—including camelina, canola, mustard, and other non-soybean oils—following the late-2022 commissioning of a feedstock pretreating unit at the site, Steve Mawer, Calumet’s chief executive officer, told investors in the company’s second-quarter 2021 earnings call on Aug. 6.
Mawer also said a debottlenecking project in 2024 would further expand throughput of the renewable diesel plant to 18,000 b/d for little capital cost.
Alongside renewable fuels production, the Great Falls renewables project will include the addition of a renewable green hydrogen plant. Mawer confirmed in August the company has now secured a fixed-cost engineering and procurement contract with an unidentified service provider for the planned renewable hydrogen plant, which is scheduled for startup in fall 2022.
Calumet, however, remains in the process of selecting investment partners for the Montana renewables business at Great Falls, with funding potentially to come from multiple interested parties.
“The field [of potential partners] has been narrowed, and when we are ready to announce, we will announce,” Mower said on Aug. 6.
The Great Falls refining site—which currently processes western Canadian heavy and light sour crudes it receives through the Front Range pipeline system via the Bow River pipeline—will ultimately function as a dual-train refinery, continuing to supply conventional gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, naphtha, and asphalt to local markets in Montana, Idaho, and Canada, as well as renewable diesel, jet, LPG, and naphtha to US West Coast and Canadian clean product markets.
Robert Brelsford | Downstream Editor
Robert Brelsford joined Oil & Gas Journal in October 2013 as downstream technology editor after 8 years as a crude oil price and news reporter on spot crude transactions at the US Gulf Coast, West Coast, Canadian, and Latin American markets. He holds a BA (2000) in English from Rice University and an MS (2003) in education and social policy from Northwestern University.
