For the river in southwestern France, see Neste River.
Neste Oil is a Finnish oil refining and marketing company producing mainly transportation fuels and other refined petroleum products. Neste Oil shares are quoted on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
History
Neste was established in 1948 as the state petrol company of Finland, to ensure the availability of fuel. This entailed the building of refineries and developing the necessary technology. It held a legal import monopoly until the market liberalization in the 1990s. The oil transport infrastructure in Finland was built and is owned by Neste, and thus petrol stations usually obtain fuels from Neste, although the monopoly is no longer government-sanctioned. In the 1970s, Neste introduced petrochemical and plastics production and natural gas to Finland. In 1994, Gasum was established with Gazprom as the minor (25%) shareholder. In 1994, polyolefin production was separated into Borealis, a joint venture with the Norwegian Statoil. In 1998, Neste Oyj merged with the power company Imatran Voima Oy to create Fortum Oyj. Neste Jacobs was established with American Jacobs Engineering in 2004. In 2005, the oil division of Fortum was transferred to re-established Neste Oil. The chemical divisions were sold to other companies, making Neste an oil company only. The State of Finland maintains controlling interest (50.1%) in the company.
Activities
Neste Oil has three business areas: oil products, oil retail and renewable fuels. It produces, refines and markets oil products and shipping and engineering services, as well as licensing production technologies. Its main products are gasolines, diesel fuels, aviation fuels, marine fuels, heating oils, heavy fuel oils, base oils, lubricants, traffic fuel components, solvents, LPG and bitumen.
Neste Oil has the largest Finnish chain of service stations with market share of 40%. It has about 900 service stations in Finland, and about 240 stations in Baltic countries, Poland, and Russia. It has also middle-sized oil refineries in Naantali and near Porvoo, and several operations in the Baltic region and the United States. It is virtually a monopoly in oil refining and import in Finland.
The engineering division of Neste has the name Neste Jacobs as it is a joint venture with American Jacobs Engineering. Neste owns several important patents. A technology for MTBE is one. Another one is the NExOCTANE technology, which allows retrofitting MTBE plants to produce iso-octane; Neste licenses this to Halliburton. Neste has also developed renewable diesel production.
Neste aims to be the leading producer of renewable diesel. NExBTL diesel is a next-generation paraffinic fuel (not traditional transesterified biodiesel). A renewable diesel plant with an annual production of 170,000 tons, located at the Porvoo refinery, was brought online in 2007. It produces 6.8% of the diesel consumption in Finland (2,5 million tons).[2] Another plant of the same capacity is being built at Porvoo. Neste is also planning to invest €550 million in a renewable diesel plant to be built to Singapore. With production of 800,000 tons annually, it will be the largest renewable diesel plant in the world.[3] Another plant of the same capacity is built into Rotterdam. The use of any palm oil as a feedstock in diesel has been protested by Greenpeace (see NExBTL#Feedstocks). Neste and Stora Enso also established a joint venture to produce renewable diesel oil from wood biomass with biomass gasification and the Fischer-Tropsch process in Varkaus, Finland.
Neste produces ETBE, which is gasoline blending stock and an antiknock agent based on bioethanol. As it is produced from isobutene of petrochemical origin and ethanol of biological origin, it is partially a biofuel. It can be mixed with gasoline and does not have the ethanol-specific problems (such as hygroscopy) that ethanol itself has.
Neste Oil is also the title sponsor of the Finnish World Rally Championship rally, Neste Rally Finland.
References
External links
