The energy company Shell wants to process significantly less climate-damaging crude oil in Germany within a few years. This is what the British-Dutch company announced. According to this, Shell no longer wants to use oil as a raw material at its Wesseling am Rhein location from 2025 onwards. So far, the company has operated one of the largest refineries in Europe in the south of Cologne. With the exit in Wesseling, Shell’s oil processing capacity in the Rhineland is expected to decrease from 17 million to around nine million tons per year – including CO₂ emissions. The group wants to continue to operate the neighboring location in Cologne-Godorf so that it can continue to sell fuel and heating oil in this country in the future.
On the one hand, Shell is under economic pressure. The more and sooner economies want to become climate-neutral, the less fossil fuels are needed: electric cars are replacing gasoline and diesel drives, while electricity-driven heat pumps are replacing oil heating systems. On the other hand, a Dutch court ruled in the spring that Shell had to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions more than planned. Investors are pushing the company in the same direction.
Instead of climate-damaging fuels, Shell wants to use more renewable raw materials in the Rhineland, says Germany boss Fabian Ziegler. For example, in the summer the company inaugurated an electrolyser in Wesseling, which produces “green” hydrogen from water with a lot of green electricity. This energy source can help steelworks or chemical plants to become independent of climate-damaging resources such as coal or natural gas. Shell is now planning the next largest electrolyser, the construction of which is to begin next year. In addition, the group is building a new plant for bio-fuels that will be used in trucks.
So far, Shell has around 1,500 direct employees at the refinery site as well as additional staff at partners. With the exit from oil processing, some jobs would probably be lost, says site boss Marco Richrath, but new plants will also be created. “Compulsory redundancies should be avoided as far as possible.” A final investment decision to convert the refinery is still pending. “We are talking about very large amounts in the billions,” says Ziegler, without specifying these in more detail.