Chemiegroep BASF puts billions of investment in Antwerp on De Helling (Antwerp)
Chemiegroep BASF sets conditions for the construction of a large CO2 shelter installation in the port of Antwerp. The government must assist in the billion -dollar project, says Jan Remeysen, the CEO of BASF Antwerp, on Saturday in an interview with De Tijd. The news is also in L’Echo.
« The final decision is expected around the turn of the year, but with an unchanged economic climate and without extra support from the government, we unfortunately cannot do that project, » says Remeysen.
More than 1 billion
It is about the Kairos@C project, a shared initiative with sector socket Air Liquide. The two companies previously announced that they wanted to set up a chain for Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): the capture of CO2 with their installations and then store them underground in empty gas fields in the North Sea. According to Remeysen, this is an investment of more than 1 billion euros.
But Basf is, just like the rest of Belgian industry, in narrow shoes. The recovered demand and the large-scale import of cheap chemicals from China, the United States and the Middle East have been weighing on production volumes for more than three years. « If your installations do not run at full speed, it is the logic itself that investments are not being made in additional capacity, » says Remeysen.
Climate objectives
Every year BASF could avoid 1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions with the CCS installation, about a third of its total emissions. « We would really like to do the project, because we get much closer to our climate objectives in the short term. But even if we can no longer account for the price of CO2 emission rights that we have to purchase less, we can no longer justify the project costs in the current context. » Belga
