ExxonMobil to make Sustainable Aviation Fuel at Gravenchon Refinery

Three key takeaways:

• Global air travel demand is increasing.
• Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) presents an opportunity to reduce emissions.
• Co-processing can help accelerate the energy transition.

Reducing emissions in the airline industry presents a significant challenge.

Airplanes rely on liquid fuels, and the International Air Transport Association expects global air travel to increase by more than 3% annually¹. So we need to balance the world’s demand for safe and reliable air travel with emissions-reduction goals.

So what are we doing about it? Well, for the better part of the past 18 months, we’ve been performing trials to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF)² and other biofuels at our Gravenchon refinery in France.

Following these trials, we produced a batch of SAF – a first in our company’s history – last month.

And that’s just the beginning. There’s plenty more to come.

Brought to you by existing infrastructure

Using our existing infrastructure and experience in traditional refining, we’re uniquely positioned to produce lower-emission fuels (LEFs) at a scale that can support the European Union’s ambitions to reduce CO2 emissions³.

We’re targeting to produce more than 3,000 barrels per day of biofuels – including SAF – at the Gravenchon facility by 2025. How? By simultaneously treating renewable feedstocks with petroleum feedstocks.

This process – known as co-processing – results in fuels that contain renewable content, which can help accelerate the energy transition. It also enables us to continue providing the fuel the world needs today and the fuel of tomorrow.

Producing SAF in France is part of our ambition to supply approximately 40,000 barrels per day of LEFs by 2025 and 200,000 barrels per day by 2030.

¹ https://www.iata.org/en/iata-repository/publications/economic-reports/global-outlook-for-air-transport---december-2022/

² https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/what-we-do/lower-emission-transportation/aviation

³ https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/what-we-do/energy-supply/global-outlook/emissions