Aramco Plans to Produce Synthetic Fuels by 2025 at Test Plants - Bloomberg

Aramco Plans to Produce Synthetic Fuels by 2025 at Test Plants - Bloomberg

Saudi Aramco aims to start operating by 2025 two demonstration plants to produce synthetic fuels that emit less carbon dioxide when burned.

The world’s biggest crude oil exporter will produce test quantities of synthetic gasoline and jet fuel and seeks to find regular buyers once they’ve tested the product, according to Ahmad Al Khowaiter, Aramco’s head of technology and innovation. If buyers accept the fuels, Aramco would build commercial-scale synthetic fuels refineries, he said in an interview at the kingdom’s main investment conference in Riyadh.

Al Khowaiter said Aramco will invest several hundred million dollars in the gasoline plant and in a synthetic jet fuel facility being developed together with Repsol SA of Spain. He didn’t give a time frame for when Aramco might decide to build the commercial scale facilities.

Aramco this week announced plans to build a test plant for synthetic gasoline in Saudi Arabia’s planned Neom city on the Red Sea. The company will produce the synthetic gasoline by combining methanol extracted from green hydrogen with carbon dioxide and then converting that into road fuel. The test facility will produce 35 barrels a day of gasoline that creates 70% fewer emissions than current fuels, and a commercial scale refinery could produce 35,000 barrels, Al Khowaiter said.

Government support for consumers using such technologies is needed to make them commercially viable, Al Khowaiter said.

The state producer is already one of the world’s largest refiners, with stakes in crude-processing plants from the US Gulf coast to China and at home. Aramco plans to double the gross amount of refining capacity in which it holds ownership stakes this decade to about 10 million barrels a day, with capacity from the projected synthetic fuels operation being only a small fraction of that.

Al Khowaiter said Aramco plans to capture 9 million tons of carbon emissions by 2030 and go beyond that in the future.