A joint venture between YPF and Essential Energy has signed a long-term agreement with TotalEnergies’ trading arm to buy future sustainable aviation fuel and other renewable fuels. The planned Santa Fe biorefinery is expected to cost more than $400 million.
Project company Santa Fe Bio and France-based TOTSA TotalEnergies Trading SA agreed on future purchases from a planned plant in San Lorenzo. Reuters and Argentine media reported that TOTSA intends to buy most of the output and will have preferential rights to remaining volumes.
YPF estimates the facility could produce about 170,000 tonnes a year of sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, and hydrotreated vegetable oil, or HVO. SAF can be made using vegetable oils and animal fats or sugars and starches. The conversion of the industrial complex is expected to require more than $400 million in investment.
YPF said the long-term contract would provide commercial certainty and help attract project financing. TotalEnergies’ participation is also expected to connect production to markets that are incorporating sustainable aviation fuel into transportation-emissions plans. YPF said the project could bring investment, jobs and exports to Argentina.
In July, biofuels specialist Agustín Torroba of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture told La Nación that Argentina’s agricultural sector produces feedstock with low carbon intensity. He estimated the country’s potential SAF production at more than $40 billion.