Besides building a new hydrocracker and modifying an existing one, adding six storage tanks is part of the more than $1 billion investment project, hiking storage capacity by 140,000 cbm (882,000 bbl).

Both expansion projects at the 190,000-b/d refining site are scheduled to be operational by 2018, subject to permits.

Last year, the oil major added a new facility (“liquid isoformer”) to the site’s 1.8 million mt/y aromatics plant to produce paraxylene with proprietary liquid-phase isomerization technology. The unit was due to come on-stream in early 2015, according to company information.

Belgian Antwerp has been another — larger — refining location singled out as “advantaged” and as such equally showered with investments on a billion-dollar scale.

In mid-2014, the group earmarked over $1 billion to add a new 50,000-b/d delayed coker unit by 2017 to its 320,000-b/d Antwerp refinery, bringing spending at the site to above $2 billion in less than a decade.

Furthermore, the group is installing a new processing unit at its 6 million-mt/y (120,000 b/d) Norwegian Slagen refinery, to replace output of heavy fuel oil with lighter, higher-value gasoil.

“Despite challenging market conditions, we have some of the largest, lowest-cost refineries in western Europe which benefit from fuels, lubes, and chemical integration,” the oil heavyweight said in its annual review.

Even though ARA locations are regularly associated with comparatively high costs, these can in individual cases be outweighed by logistical and integration advantages.

“While elsewhere in Europe refineries are being shut down, here, companies are heavily investing in modernization,” the Rotterdam port authority said. “This means that investing in Rotterdam is compared with investing in other locations, where the cost of energy and raw materials is often lower.”