Shell Weighs Installing Solar Panels At Its Largest Oil Refinery

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell is mulling over installing solar panels at its largest wholly owned refinery in the world, the Pulau Bukom site in Singapore, a spokeswoman for Shell told Reuters on Tuesday.

“We are exploring the potential of installing solar panels at our Pulau Bukom Manufacturing Site,” the spokeswoman said.

Pulau Bukom is one of Shell’s most important oil refining and petrochemicals production sites and it also serves as a hub for selling refined oil products in Asia Pacific. The manufacturing site is the largest wholly owned Shell refinery globally in terms of crude distillation capacity—500,000 barrels per day, Shell says. The production site also hosts an ethylene cracker complex with capacity to produce up to a million tons a year and a Butadiene Extraction Unit capable of producing 155,000 tons annually.

Two months ago, Shell increased the storage capacity at the Bukom refinery, enabling it “to buy more oil when market conditions are attractive,” Robin Mooldijk, Executive Vice President for Manufacturing at Shell, said.  

Now, as part of its plan to improve energy efficiency and cut its carbon footprint, Shell will be installing solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation systems at three of its manufacturing and logistics sites in Singapore—Tuas, Jurong Island, and Pandan, the company said on Monday, noting that it “is exploring more solar installations in its other sites in Singapore.”

“At our sites, we are deploying solutions from Shell New Energies, and are actively pursuing opportunities to trial next-generation advanced manufacturing and clean energy technologies. It is our goal to make the transition towards a low-carbon future possible, for our operations and our customers,” Aw Kah Peng, Chairman, Shell Companies in Singapore, said in a statement.  

Earlier this year Shell announced its first-ever short-term goals to cut the carbon footprint of its operations and product sales.  

Last month, Shell’s chief executive Ben van Beurden said that the world reducing emissions to net zero “is the only way to go,” and called on businesses to work together to move faster in addressing climate change.  

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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