Neste Corp. has made its final investment decision worth 1.4 billion euros (USD$1.6 billion) to more than double its renewable diesel production capacity in Singapore by adding an additional 1.3 million tons of annual capacity.

Neste’s Singapore plant exports significant volumes of renewable diesel to California and the U.S. West Coast. The decision comes less than two weeks after the U.S. EPA announced its final rule to grow the biomass-based diesel standard under the Renewable Fuel Standard by 330 million gallons, from 2.1 billion gallons this year and next to 2.43 billion gallons in 2020. The announcement also follows a string of U.S.-based renewable diesel projects underway that will grow U.S. production capacity, including Diamond Green Diesel’s expansion from 275 MMgy to 675 MMgy, Renewable Energy Group’s partnership with Phillips 66 to build a renewable diesel refinery in Washington State, and Ryze Renewables’ projects under development in Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada.

According to Neste, current annual production capacity from its three plants in Singapore, the Netherlands and Finland totals 2.7 million tons. Of this, the Singapore refinery currently has more than 1 million tons of renewable diesel capacity, the same as in the Netherlands, with the remaining in Finland. The company stated that before adding a new production line in Singapore, it will continue to eliminate bottlenecks in its existing production facilities, bringing capacity to 3 million tons by 2020.

The investment in Singapore will include additional logistics capabilities and enhanced raw material pretreatment.

The expansion in Singapore and debottlenecking efforts in all three refineries will bring the company’s total annual production capacity to 4.5 million tons in 2022.