Total’s Antwerp platform adapts to energy-transition challenges, market trends

The Antwerp refining and petrochemicals platform is Total Energies' largest integrated complex in Europe. (Photo: Total Energies)

Total Energies provided an update April 22 on its Antwerp platform in Belgium, its investments for the future, and plans to reconfigure its petrochemicals operations to strengthen competitiveness.

A key industrial site for Total Energies for more than 75 years, the Antwerp platform is based on an integrated business model, which guarantees the resilience of its operations.

“By adapting and investing regularly in our Antwerp site, we’re securing its long-term future and ensuring that this integrated refining and petrochemicals platform remains Total Energies’ most efficient in Europe,” said Ann Veraverbeke, the managing director of Total Energies Antwerp. “Whether the aim is to meet market challenges or contribute to decarbonization and the energy transition, the platform can be reconfigured so that it remains competitive and continues to provide jobs well into the future.”

Adapting to accelerate decarbonization

Thanks to green hydrogen, the Antwerp platform is speeding up its own decarbonization.

As part of a 200-megawatt Air Liquide electrolyzer project, Total Energies has signed a tolling agreement for 130 megawatts dedicated to the annual production of 15,000 tons of green hydrogen for its Antwerp platform.

Upstream of the electrolyzer, Total Energies will supply green electricity thanks to its OranjeWind offshore-wind project.

Scheduled for the end of 2027, the project will reduce CO2 emissions at the Antwerp site by up to 150,000 tons per year and contribute to the European targets (RED III) for renewable energy in transport.

With the production of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), Antwerp will contribute to its aviation customers’ energy transition, helping them meet the challenge of reducing their carbon footprint.

An initial project to produce 50,000 tons a year of SAF via coprocessing will be implemented at the Antwerp platform in 2025.

Coprocessing is a production method that enables the simultaneous treatment of hydrocarbons and biomass in a conventional refining unit.

Thanks to process electrification and battery-based energy storage, the platform is contributing respectively to the decarbonization of its industrial operations and to the growing need to balance Belgian and European high-voltage transmission grids.

With a power rating of 25 megawatts and capacity of 75 megawatt-hours, Antwerp’s battery-storage system is Total Energies’ biggest in Europe.

Commissioned last year, it helps offset the intermittency of renewable energies to encourage their development.

Adapting to meet changing market needs, address overcapacity

Alongside these future-focused developments, the Antwerp platform is also facing considerable overcapacity in the petrochemicals market.

In the light of the significant surplus of ethylene expected in Europe, Total Energies thus intends to cease operating its oldest steam cracker in Antwerp by the end of 2027.

Indeed, the latter was historically dependent on a major contract with a third-party user of the ethylene produced, which recently decided not to renew it.

As a result, the steam cracker, which is not integrated to Total Energies’ downstream polymer production, will no longer have any outlets for its ethylene production.

The unit shutdown will allow the site to focus on its more recent steam cracker, whose ethylene production is entirely consumed by Total Energies’ industrial units in Antwerp and Feluy.

The reconfiguration will be conducted without any layoffs.

The 253 employees concerned will each be offered a solution aligned with their personal situation—retirement or an internal transfer to another position based at the Antwerp site.

This project is subject to the legally required employee-consultation and notification process, which Total Energies will initiate with representatives of Antwerp-platform employees in late April.