Flint Hills Resources has opened a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blending facility at its Pine Bend Refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, giving Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) its first path to commercial-volume SAF. The new unit can handle up to 30 million gallons of neat SAF a year, meaning unblended fuel that must be mixed with conventional jet fuel before aircraft can burn it, with volumes expected to start well below that ceiling.
Delta Air Lines is the anchor customer. The carrier recently signed a five-year contract with Shell, which will supply the neat SAF to the facility and deliver at least 15 million gallons across multiple airports in 2026. At MSP, where Delta operates a hub and burns roughly 250 million gallons of jet fuel a year, the blended fuel moves through an existing 10-mile pipeline straight to the airport. The project supports Delta's goal of using SAF for 10% of its fuel needs by 2030, and is backed by the Minnesota SAF Hub partners and the Greater MSP Partnership.
Pine Bend is a fitting home for the work. It is the largest refinery in the United States located in a state with no oil wells of its own, and the blending facility leans on infrastructure the plant already runs: rail unloading systems, large-volume storage tanks, a laboratory, underground pipelines and filtration systems. Flint Hills will test and certify each SAF blend on site before it ships to MSP.
That certification step is the point. Neat SAF cannot enter an airport fuel system until it is blended, tested, and cleared for use in today's aircraft, and with more flights operating on SAF, blending capacity like Pine Bend's is becoming a core part of the supply chain.
