Cerilon announced that it is moving into the front-end engineering and design phase of the gas-to-liquids refinery it plans to build in North Dakota, also stating that a final investment decision on the project is still two years away.
The company, which is headquartered in Calgary, Canada, said Tuesday that front-end loading definition of the project has been completed by Worley, and that the same engineering firm will now begin FEED work.
The company has not yet made a final investment decision to proceed with construction, but it said in a news release that it expects to do so in mid-2026, that construction would begin shortly after and that it targets the first phase of the plant to start up in 2028 and become fully operational the following year.
Cerilon is a start-up company aiming to build and operate multiple gas-to-liquid refineries making base stocks and other products such as low-sulfur diesel and naphtha. The project in Trenton, North Dakota – the first facility – would be built in two phases, the first of which would be designed for total production capacity of 24,000 barrels per day, including 5,800 b/d of API Group III base oils. The second phase would have similar capacity, but the company has not set a timeline for that.
Tuesday’s news release described the FEED work as the last stage before the final investment decision, but it also noted that the project still requires some regulatory approvals. The company expects to have all of those by the end of this year.
The Trenton project is in line to be the first commercial scale gas-to-liquids plant in the United States. It would also be one of the few large sources of Group III base oils in North America. Two such facilities currently exist: a Chevron refinery in Richmond, California, and a Petro-Canada facility in Mississauga, Canada.
Cerilon said it is progressing with financing and commercial agreements.