Refiners have started to produce growing volumes of cleaner fuels and petrochemicals, betting on the next big drivers of global fuel and chemical demand, as consumption growth of conventional transportation fuels has weakened.

Due to the pivot to fuels from renewable feedstocks and increased petrochemical volumes, refiners have raised demand for catalysts and additives to process renewable feedstocks such as cooking oil.

“What we see is alternative feedstocks, the blending in of some components with biomass background at refineries in the last couple of years,” Maurits van Tol, chief executive at catalyst technologies provider Johnson Matthey, told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy conference in India.

Last October, Johnson Matthey opened a new engineering center in India, which will focus on technologies for hydrogen, sustainable fuels, sustainable methanol, and specialty chemicals.

Also in India, one of the biggest refiners, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), plans to invest as much as $11 billion in a new refining and petrochemical complex with an ethylene cracker with a capacity of at least 9 million metric tons per year in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh.

BPCL and other Indian refiners are looking to boost their crude processing and petrochemicals capacity to meet growing demand in the world’s third-largest crude oil importer.

Thanks to the new refinery in Andhra Pradesh, BPCL looks to hike its petrochemicals production to account for over 40% of its portfolio, up from about 2%-3% now, the company’s director of refineries, Sanjay Khanna, told Reuters.

Outside India, refiners have raised biofuel output. At some of the biggest U.S. refiners, renewable diesel made profits in the fourth quarter and helped them beat analyst estimates despite plunging refining margins for conventional road fuels such as gasoline and diesel.

Resilient refining throughput and increased earnings in the renewable diesel division helped Valero Energy post an earnings beat for Q4, while Marathon Petroleum Corp reported higher-than-expected earnings, driven by stronger performance in the midstream and renewable diesel divisions.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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