KBR will provide its licensed ammonia synthesis loop technology for a new million ton-per-year ammonia plant in Duqm, Oman. Shell will produce CCS-based hydrogen feedstock at its adjacent Blue Horizons plant, a project launched last year with support from Oman’s Ministry of Energy and Minerals.
Hydrom (Hydrogen Oman) has signed commercial term sheets and allocated land to a series of important ammonia export projects being developed in the Gulf nation. Green Energy Oman is one of three project consortia granted land near Duqm in the country’s south, with further allocations expected in the coming months. Also in Duqm, ENGIE & POSCO have launched a million-tonne-per-year ammonia production project, with the full production output to be exported to Korea over the forty year operational lifetime of the plant.
Shell will acquire a 35% stake and operatorship of the Green Energy Oman (GEO) project, a 25 GW renewable ammonia supergiant under development on the Oman coast. The news is the latest in a series of ammonia energy announcements from the oil & gas majors.
Yara and Northern Lights have signed the world’s first commercial agreement for cross border CO2 transport and storage. Emissions from the Sluiskil production plant in the Netherlands will be captured, processed and transported for sequestration at the Northern Lights storage site off the coast of Norway. Yara is pursuing multiple decarbonisation options for the Sluiskil plant, including this CCS announcement, waste hydrogen, and offshore wind-to-hydrogen as part of Ørsted’s larger SeaH2Land project.
A high-profile industry consortium (including Equinor, Shell and ABS) will validate NOV’s subsea fuel storage system. NOV argues subsea storage will be a crucial element for effective distribution of ammonia as an alternative maritime fuel. Validation testing is expected to be completed by the end of next year, with the first projects deployed late 2024 to 2025.
KBR has been awarded a study to help establish a green hydrogen economy in the dual-island nation. Repurposing of Trinidad & Tobago's existing industrial infrastructure - particularly grey hydrogen & ammonia production facilities - will be a key focus. Trinidad & Tobago occupies a crucial role in the global ammonia supply chain, but its reliance on grey hydrogen means that declining gas reserves and spiraling gas import prices have created shortfalls, with some ammonia production suspended and plants closed. A green ammonia project led by NewGen Energy will develop a 130 MW, solar-powered electrolyser facility in Point Lisas, and feed the state-owned Tringen I & II ammonia production plants 27,200 tonnes per year of green hydrogen feedstock.
thyssenkrupp will engineer, procure and fabricate a 2 GW+ electrolysis plant at the NEOM project in Saudi Arabia, based on their 20 MW alkaline water electrolysis module. The plant is scheduled to start production in 2026, with hydrogen from the facility will be used to make ammonia for export to global markets. At the Port of Rotterdam, thyssenkrupp will also take the lead on Shell's 200 MW, ‘Holland Hydrogen I’ project, with hydrogen production scheduled to start in 2024.
This week Horisont Energi, Equinor and Vår Energi entered into a new cooperation agreement for development of the Barents Blue facility, and also revealed the project is set to triple in size from 1 million tonnes per year blue ammonia to 3 million.
Welcome to the Ammonia Wrap: a summary of all the latest announcements, news items and publications about ammonia energy. There's so much news this edition that we're bringing you two, special Wrap articles. Our first focuses on ammonia production - both existing and new build plants. This week: InterContinental Energy to build 25 GW of green ammonia production in Oman, Cummins and KBR to collaborate on integrated green ammonia solutions, New green ammonia pilot plant for Minnesota, Stamicarbon launches new technology for sustainable fertilizer production in Kenya, Haldor Topsoe and Shchekinoazot to explore ammonia plant decarbonisation in Russia, 1 million tonne blue ammonia per year in Norway and Trammo announces off-take MoU for 2GW AustriaEnergy plant in Chile.
At the start of this month, a coalition of eleven corporations launched a new advocacy body, Hydrogen Forward, with the explicit purpose of lobbying the United States government to pursue a national hydrogen strategy. "While Europe and East Asia have committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars into hydrogen solutions, the U.S. is the only major market without a national hydrogen strategy. A comprehensive approach is critical because it provides a much-needed framework to enable fast, large-scale adoption."
ANNOUNCEMENT: California's Stanford University held a two-day workshop this week to launch a new effort aimed at advancing hydrogen “for stable, long-term, low-carbon energy storage.” The Stanford Hydrogen Focus Group intends to support research, serve as a technical resource, and disseminate information via workshops and symposia.
In the last 12 months ... National oil companies in Europe and the Middle East are looking to satisfy East Asian demand for clean hydrogen by exporting carbon-free ammonia. One of the biggest global LNG exporters is investigating ammonia for the same market, as it considers Australia's future as a renewable energy exporter. Oil majors are assessing ammonia's role in implementing an affordable hydrogen economy, looking toward fuel markets in California and Europe. And the biggest coal producer in China is funding the development of "the world’s first practical ammonia-powered vehicle."
September 10–14 gave us five remarkable events both evidencing and advancing the rise of hydrogen in transportation and energy. Any one of them would have made it a significant week; together they make a sea change.
ITM Power and Sumitomo Corporation have entered into a strategic partnership “for the development of multi-megawatt projects in Japan based exclusively on ITM Power’s electrolyser products.” The two companies will also look for collaborative opportunities outside Japan. In a July 9 press release, ITM refers to the two companies’ shared vision for “the use of hydrogen to decarbonise heat, transport and industrial processes” as the foundation for the arrangement.
This week, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the leaders of 13 global companies, representing more than EUR 1 trillion in annual revenues, announced the launch of the Hydrogen Council. This new global initiative is important for obvious reasons: it presents a compelling "united vision and long-term ambition" for hydrogen, it promises global engagement with "key stakeholders such as policy makers, business and hydrogen players, international agencies and civil society," and it pledges financial commitments to RD&D totaling EUR 10 billion over the next five years. It is important for a subtler reason too: it is the first hydrogen industry promotion I've seen that includes ammonia. It includes ammonia both implicitly, encompassing "hydrogen and its compounds," and explicitly, listing ammonia as a "renewable fuel" in its own right.