The end of Russian oil brought a surprise to Neste: Refining is now even easier

About 5 billion euros worth of crude oil is imported into Finland every year. Oil is mainly imported from Norway, but oil is also shipped from the United States and Great Britain.

Oil does not pass through the Strait of Hormuz to Finland, although due to its closure, gasoline prices also increased at Finnish gas stations. However, the oil market is global, so local supply challenges have a wide impact: when there is less supply of the product than before, but the same number of buyers, the price of the product rises.

That’s why, for example, the production of aviation fuel is now particularly profitable, even though there was almost no demand for the product during the corona years. It is produced in Kilpilahti, for example Liquid At the Porvoo refinery, where gasoline and diesel are also refined, which are refueled in cars all over Finland.

Russia forced change

Most of Neste’s refined crude oil also comes from Norway. A few years ago, most of the oil was imported from Russia, but its share dropped to zero after Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022.

“The oils we buy these days are less sulfur-rich. All in all, the operation has been perhaps even easier from the refiner’s point of view with these Norwegian Sea oils”, director of Nesteen’s Porvoo refinery Mark Pirnes tells.

Norway has almost a hundred oil fields in the North Sea. Currently, the most significant of them in terms of oil production is Johan Svedrup, which is responsible for about a third of Norway’s oil production.

However, Pirnes does not say in more detail which oil fields the oil procured by Neste comes from. He is content to say that raw materials are procured from several sources according to the needs of the refinery.

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St1:lle and supplying fuel to the S-group gas stations Neot refines oil in Gothenburg, Sweden, for example, but Neot also obtains oil from other Nordic refineries.

“Unlike renewable fossil fuels, there are no statutory requirements for traceability and accountability. The absence of mandatory legislation poses challenges for determining the exact origin of the crude oil used in fossil fuels,” says Neot’s website.

To the station in a week

One to two ships loaded with crude oil arrive in Kilpilahti every week. A tanker traveling from Norway, which can hold about 150,000 tons of oil, takes about three days to reach Porvoo.

“If all our crude oil came in cars, there would have to be 27 trucks with full trailers per hour, or approximately every two minutes,” Pirnes opens.

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Crude oil is unloaded from ships along pipelines to caves, and from there it is pumped to the surface to a tank, where it is made into a suitable mixture. From there, the oil continues to the distillation column, where gasoline is separated from other oil products. After removing the sulfur and raising the octane number, the gasoline travels to the loading terminal.

“Someone might think that it takes a month, but in practice it takes about two days from when the crude oil is fed in, when it is a product at the refinery’s distribution terminal,” says Pirnes.

In principle, the oil that left Norway can be in the tank of your car within a week.

The distribution terminal is buzzing in the evening and at night when tanker trucks pick up loads. 200–250 tanker trucks leave the terminal every day.

The land of thousands of gas stations

From the terminal, gasoline continues to the station in a tanker truck. A tanker truck followed by Iltalehti took the load from Kilpilahti to Tammisto gas station in Vantaa.

In total, Neste has around 700 gas stations in Finland. There are approximately 200 automatic stations and service stations each, the rest are stations with heavy traffic. In addition to these, St1 has around 400 stations in Finland and SOK has around 460 ABC service and automatic stations. The refueling network is extensive, but visits are concentrated along busy roads.

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“We have big rest stops on all main roads: there are merchant-driven ones like Jari-Pekat and Matkakeitaat and Restelin with Huili in Linnatuuli and for example Kivihovi on the 1st road. And then there are the Tammisto type ones, which are at urban traffic hubs,” says Nestee’s head of the station network Katri Taskinen.

Busy Neste stations can have up to 3,000 customer visits per day.

Diesel is mostly refueled at heavy traffic stations, but there is also demand for fuel oil. About the same amount of diesel and gasoline goes to stations for light traffic, i.e. passenger cars.

“When the car fleet is first electrified through hybrid cars to fully electric, the share of diesel decreases faster,” says Taskinen.

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Biogas possible

According to Pirnes, Neste’s Porvoo refinery is the world’s leading producer of renewable diesel and renewable aviation fuel. These fuels are produced from vegetable oils, such as used frying fat, without fossil raw materials. However, biogasoline is not produced in the refinery.

“The technical solutions to do it exist, but it’s a good question why we don’t do it. If there was a demand and a need for it, I think it could be more in the product range,” says Pirnes.

In the early 2000s, Neste sold E98 biogasoline on an experimental basis. However, the product, which is more expensive than the fossil alternative, did not go wild.

“Of course we have an organic obligation [jakeluvelvoite]which we have to fill, but we are able to fill it quite well with the renewable part related to diesel”, explains Pirnes.