JX unit to build power plant fueled by refinery waste

JX Nippon Oil and Energy Corp. will construct a power plant at its Kashima refinery in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, that uses by-products of the facility as fuel, the company announced on August 28.
The JX Holdings Inc. (5020) unit will install equipment within the refinery to solidify and extract heavy oil left over after gasoline and light oil are produced from crude. It will also modify idle turbines and boilers on adjoining land to use the oil for power generation. The project will cost a total of JPY25 billion (USD253 million) and is slated for completion by the end of March 2016. It is expected to have a generation capacity of 100,000kw.
The firm hopes to cut costs at the facility by using, rather than disposing of, byproducts of the crude oil refining process. The high cost of oil-fired power had also been an issue, but exploiting previously unusable resources for that purpose will lower fuel costs.
The company plans to sell electricity generated by the new plant to corporations as a power producer and supplier. It began wholesaling oil-fired power in the late 1990s. The Kashima plant will boost JX Nippon Oil’s generation capacity by about 7% to around 1.46 million kilowatts.
(August 29, 2013)