Baton Rouge-based American Clean Energy Refining (ACER) today announced its plan to construct a new, $2 billion oil and gas refinery near the former Shell facility in Convent, according to Reuters.
The refinery will provide services for shale oil, sometimes called frack oil, which is extracted via a similar fracking process as natural gas. According to ACER, the refinery will be the first in the U.S. to focus on the country’s excess shale oil.
The 300,000-barrels-per-day facility will be “state of the art” and designed to lower carbon emissions. The final site for the refinery is still under review.
Separately, ACER has submitted a $1.25 billion binding bid for the idled 211,146-barrels-per-day Shell refinery. Shell shut the Convent refinery in December 2020, at the time saying it hadn’t been able to sell the facility once it became unprofitable amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coleman Ferguson, ACER spokesperson, says ACER made a $1.75 billion offer to Shell before the refinery was closed but was declined. ACER’s initial plan was to purchase the Shell refinery and expand it, but instead is moving forward with the separate $2 billion project and continuing its negotiations with Shell.
