EurOil: Shell calls time on oil refining in Germany

Royal Dutch Shell announced on November 4 it was ending oil processing at its Rheinland refinery in Wesseling in Germany as part of its shift to lower-carbon energy.

Oil processing at the site will cease in 2025, and from then on it will produce low or zero-carbon products instead, Shell said. The Rheinland site will be rebranded as the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Rheinland, focused on production of green hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels and renewable bio-LNG. The complex currently handles 150,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil.

Shell’s other refinery in Rheinland, in Godorf, will continue to handle crude oil. But it will distil it to form mineral oil products, Shell said, although a final decision on this investment has not yet been taken. That refinery’s capacity is 190,000 bpd.

The Rheinland facilities currently employ around 3,000 people, of which half work for Shell and the rest for contractor firms. Shell said it would try to avoid redundancies, hoping instead to switch workers to new roles or retrain them. Some will also retire, it said.

The transition plan comes after Shell commissioned Europe’s biggest polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) electrolyser for developing green hydrogen in Rheinland in July. It has a current capacity of 10 MW but this is set to be expanded to 100 MW at a later stage, pending a final investment decision (FID). It will use renewable energy to produce up to 1,300 tonnes per year (tpy) of green hydrogen.

The project’s cost was €20mn ($24mn), of which half was covered by EU grants.

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