OCP Group SA plans to invest $7 billion to build an ammonia plant in Tarfaya, in southern Morocco, using green hydrogen produced from renewable fuel, Reuters reported on June 20. The plant is slated to produce 200,000 mt/y of ammonia by 2026, increasing to 1 million mt/y by 2027 and 3 million mt/y by 2032, the company told Reuters.
The plant, which would use hydrogen produced from solar and wind powered electrolysis as a raw material to make ammonia, is part of an ambitious strategy that OCP announced in December to invest approximately $13 billion in 2023-2027 to ramp up its transition to carbon neutrality by 2040 and reduce the company’s dependency on ammonia imports (GM Dec. 9, 2022).
Morocco imported a total of 1.88 million mt of ammonia in 2022, according to Trade Data Monitor, up from 1.65 million mt in 2021. Russia was Morocco’s main ammonia supplier before the war in Ukraine, but imports from Russia fell to 254,531 mt in 2022, down from 826,255 mt in 2021.
With the loss of Russian ammonia, Morocco has been forced to cast a wider net. Ammonia imports for January-April this year totaled 444,650 mt, down 37% from the prior year’s 706,139 mt, with more than half supplied by Trinidad. Other exporters of ammonia to Morocco for the first four months of this year included Saudi Arabia, the US, Oman, and Indonesia.
In addition to the green ammonia plant, OCP also plans to invest in desalination powered by renewable energy, both to supply its industrial facilities and to supply adjacent farmland. Its Tarfaya project involves a renewable-energy powered desalination plant with capacity of 60 million cubic meters/y to supply the industrial facilities, OCP confirmed in December.
Morocco’s largest announced green hydrogen and green ammonia project to date is the HEVO Ammonia Morocco project, unveiled in July 2021 (GM July 16, 2021). Based on solar power, the plant is targeted to produce 183,000 mt/y of green ammonia when operations commence, which is expected in 2026.