OCI Global on Sept. 15announced an agreement to offtake green hydrogen from New Fortress Energy Inc.’s (NFE) hydrogen business ZeroParks from its plant in Texas, beginning in 2025. The agreement will allow OCI Global to significantly scale up green ammonia production capacity to approximately 160,000 mt/y in Beaumont, Texas.
The agreement follows a 100-megawatt (MW) electrolyzer system order from Electric Hydrogen Co. (EH2) announced by NFE on Sept. 12. The green hydrogen will be produced by ZeroParks, using proton exchange membrane (PEM) technology and delivered to OCI’s facilities in Beaumont, where it will then be converted into green ammonia.
NFE’s first green hydrogen project, ZeroPark I, will come online in two phases. The first phase in 2025 will allow OCI to produce approximately 80,000 mt/y of green ammonia, and the second in 2026 will double OCI’s production capacity to 160,000 mt/y.
OCI produced its first tons of hydrogen-based green ammonia earlier this year at its Egypt Green facility, which is owned by Fertiglobe, a strategic partnership between OCI Global and ADNOC. OCI said the new plans complement its large-scale blue ammonia project in Texas, in partnership with Linde plc, which is scheduled to begin production in 2025 (GM Feb. 10, p. 1).
OCI also announced on Sept. 13 that it plans to double its green methanol production capacity to approximately 400,000 mt/y at its facility in Beaumont. Green methanol will come from a mix of renewable feedstocks, including renewable natural gas (RNG), green hydrogen, and other over-the-fence feedstock partnerships.
“Today’s announcement cements OCI’s position as the leading green methanol producer globally,” said OCI Global CEO Ahmed El-Hoshy. “It also represents another milestone in our decarbonization journey as a business, and our commitment to driving the energy transition.”
He added that it is clear that both methanol and ammonia will need to play an integral role to reach the IMO’s revised targets and he said OCI stands ready to supply them.
The scale-up plans include entering into supply agreements for renewable natural gas (RNG) exceeding 15,000 mmBtu per day, as well as securing the waste and development rights from the City of Beaumont. This is OCI’s first upstream RNG production facility and production is slated to start in first-quarter 2025. OCI also expects to produce green hydrogen-based e-methanol for the first time.
Methanol offtakers include the road fuels market, where it is used as a fuel-blend to reduce emissions; as a building block in a range of industrial applications; and most recently, as a fuel for shipping.
OCI has projected growth in incremental demand in the green methanol market of more than 6 million mt/y by 2028, due to the adoption of green methanol as a shipping fuel, based on the 225 dual-fueled methanol vessels now on order.
This summer, the first-ever green methanol container vessel, owned by AP Moller Maersk, was fueled with OCI HyFuels green methanol on its maiden voyage from Korea to Copenhagen. The company also announced last month a new agreement with Xpress Feeder Lines to supply their green methanol ships at the Port of Rotterdam from 2025.
“We continue to see more and more realization that methanol is the transportation sector’s most viable solution and the easiest way to transport and use renewable hydrogen today,” said Bashir Lebada, CEO, OCI Methanol/HyFuels.
“It is a solution that is available now and our focus is on continuing to scale technologies, whether through our projects or our supply partners, to ensure that our capacities continue to grow alongside demand,” Lebada added. “We are seeing increasing pull from road fuel markets due to the delay in EV adoption and charging station build-out, and while marine demand has been growing at a very fast pace, we have yet to see the impact of retrofits which should end up being a larger segment than new-builds.”