Paul Rodden • Season: 2024 • Episode: 340
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Welcome to The Hydrogen Podcast!
In episode 340, Thyssenkrupp Nucera pulls back on hydrogen investment in the US, pending the coming election, shell moves forward with their blue ammonia plant in Oman. And natural hydrogen gets some good news in Canada. I’ll go over all of this and give my thoughts on today’s hydrogen podcast.
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Transcript:
Thyssenkrupp Nucera pulls back on hydrogen investment in the US, pending the coming election, shell moves forward with their blue ammonia plant in Oman. And natural hydrogen gets some good news in Canada. I’ll go over all of this and give my thoughts on today’s hydrogen podcast.
So the big questions in the energy industry today are, how is hydrogen the primary driving force behind the evolution of energy? Where is capital being deployed for hydrogen projects globally, and where are the best investment opportunities for early adopters who recognize the importance hydrogen? I will address the critical issues and give you the information you need to deploy capital. Those are the questions that will unlock the potential of hydrogen, and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Paul Rodden and welcome to the hydrogen podcast.
In an article in Reuters on August 13, Christoph Steitz and Tom Käckenhoff write Thyssenkrupp Nucera braces for delay in US hydrogen subsidy law. Thyssenkrupp Nucera expects law it is relying on to subsidise green hydrogen to be delayed until after the U.S. presidential election, making it hard to predict how projects in the nascent industry will evolve, its CEO said on Tuesday. Following the Ukraine war and Germany’s shift away from Russian gas, Berlin has focused on developing green hydrogen as an alternative energy source.
But the industry has been banking on tax credits from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and his administration has yet to back up the outline law with detail. Thyssenkrupp Nucera CEO Werner Ponikwar said the chance was “very low” that the legislation would be enacted before the November election, also flagging a potential risk that regulation could change under a new government. “And again I think this is one of those uncertainties that makes it for us very difficult to predict also how projects will move ahead in next year,” he told analysts after presenting final third-quarter results. The impact is potentially huge in that the U.S. hydrogen generation market was estimated at $18.3 billion in 2023 and to grow to $31.4 billion by 2033, according to Precedence Research. Thyssenkrupp Nucera, in which Thyssenkrupp holds a majority stake, last month scrapped financial guidance for its alkaline water electrolysis business division, saying ongoing uncertainty made a forecast impossible for now.
Still, equipment orders stood at 1.3 billion euros ($1.4 billion) at the end of June, up from 1.2 billion at the end of March, the company, which sells electrolysers, said on Tuesday. Shares, which have more than halved since Thyssenkrupp Nucera’s listing last year, were up 2.4% at 0941 GMT. Ponikwar played down the risk that parts of the IRA could be repealed in the event Donald Trump, who has voiced scepticism over some clean technologies, is elected as president. “I think that actually everyone also in the U.S. understands that we need to change here when it comes to the way how we produce and use energy,” Ponikwar said. “I would not believe that someone will actually wipe that off the table now.” But there is a risk a new government changes regulations, Ponikwar told journalists, adding that was why Thyssenkrupp Nucera’s was focusing on strategic investors rather than opportunistic project developers.
Project developers are more dependent on external funding than strategic players, such as industrial gases companies, which develop hydrogen projects on their own initiative, he said. Okay, so Thyssenkrupp Nucera is holding on further investments into green hydrogen in the US until after the presidential election in November. And to be fair, this is a very uncertain time for the hydrogen economy here in the States, as there is no clear path forward with either candidate. A Harris presidency has the potential to continue on with the current Biden administration’s hydrogen hub funding and tax credits. But at the same time, when I began this hydrogen journey that I and many others are currently on. It was started during the first Trump administration, and the fact that hydrogen is becoming a global commodity, well, it would behoove the US to continue developing its hydrogen economy.
My belief is that if there is a party change in the presidency, we wouldn’t lose hydrogen production, but it may shift our thought process and priority on how it’s produced, but ultimately, only time will tell, with the hope that the US doesn’t get left behind in the global hydrogen transition. Next in an article in oil and gas journal, Mikaila Adams writes, Shell lets contracts for blue hydrogen project in Oman. Oman Shell has let contracts to Wood plc and KBR for work on the proposed blue hydrogen and ammonia project in Duqm, Oman.
The Blue Horizons project is expected to produce low-carbon blue hydrogen by processing natural gas into hydrogen and CO2. The blue hydrogen and ammonia are expected to be used in local industries in the Duqm Special Economic Zone and exported to international markets. Plans also include carbon capture and storage (CCS). A contract was let to Wood plc to deliver pre-front-end engineering design (FEED) services. Wood will design the integrated blue hydrogen and ammonia production plant, marine facilities including ammonia storage, 200-km pipeline and CO2 injection plant. Wood will utilize teams across the UK, Ireland, Italy, India, and Oman to deliver the work, which is expected to be completed in 2025. Oman Shell has contracted KBR for its blue ammonia technology. The project is expected to utilize KBR’s ammonia synthesis loop technology. Under the terms of the contract, KBR will provide licensed proprietary engineering design for the 3,000 tonnes/day ammonia plant utilizing hydrogen produced by Shell’s Blue Hydrogen technology.
Okay, so shell is moving forward in a big way with their blue hydrogen production in Oman, with wood getting selected for the feed study and KBR designing the blue ammonia plant. Now it will be interesting to see if the green projects announced in Oman will get online sooner than this project. I’m also curious about the offtake of this ammonia. As most of us know, there is a projected demand increase for the fertilizer feedstock globally, and I’m wondering if offtake has already been established for the 3000 tons per day shell is looking to produce from this facility. And lastly, in a press release on August 15, QIMC Announces Major Milestones: Completion of Line 1 Extension to the West and Hydrogen Model. Quebec Innovative Materials Corp., or qimc, is pleased to announce the successful extension of Line 1 to the west, executed in partnership with INRS (Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique) doubling Line 1’s area of high hydrogen values to over 3.25 kms. Additionally, we are proud to present the comprehensive hydrogen model developed by Professor Marc Richer-Lafleche and share insights into the sources of the clean natural renewable identified in the Ville Marie project. “The potential for developing a robust hydrogen infrastructure at Ville Marie and St-Bruno-de-Guigues is crucial for meeting local community needs and supporting Quebec’s broader clean emission goals..” notes John Karagiannidis, CEO of QIMC.
“This initiative is expected to play a vital role in reducing Quebec’s greenhouse gas emissions and fostering sustainable energy practices.” To delineate the area of high hydrogen values observed along line one of the July 2024 soil gas survey. The field crew extended line one westward during the first week of August of this year. Again in a quote from Professor Richer Laflèche, The concentration distribution of the hydrogen soil anomalies (figure 1) emphasizes a westward delineation of the hydrogen anomaly domain. This spatial variability may reflect, among other things, the presence of contrasting geological units (arkosic sandstones, Cobalt Group conglomerates, Ordovician dolomitic limestones) and also the probable presence of the Rivière-Blanche fault, which may be present in the St-Bruno-de-Guigues area beneath the thick glacial-lacustrine sediments.” “We believe that this fault is partly responsible for the emplacement of hydrogen in the St-Bruno-de-Guigues area.” said John Karagiannidis, President of QIMC.
“The location of this fault is a priority for QIMC and INRS and will be the subject of a high spatial resolution audiomagnetotelluric survey to be carried out in the fall of 2024. Okay, so I’ll go ahead and pull away as this press release gets quite a bit more technical. Now, for those of you that don’t know about this project, it’s a natural hydrogen venture in Canada. Now, the Quebec innovative materials corporation is a mineral exploration and development company, and it would seem like they’re leveraging their experience in subsurface mineral exploration to seek natural hydrogen deposits, and doing so, it seems with great success, they are also doing extensive research with the INRS in determining reservoir evaluation and appropriate geophysical properties for natural hydrogen production in multiple forms. So overall, great news for the future of natural hydrogen and the Canadian hydrogen infrastructure.
All right, that’s it for me, everyone. If you have a second, I would really appreciate it. If you could leave a good review on whatever platform it is that you listen to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google, YouTube, whatever it is, that would be a tremendous help to the show. And as always, if you ever have any feedback, you’re welcome to email me directly at info@thehydrogenpodcast.com. So until next time, keep your eyes up and honor one another.
Hey, this is Paul. I hope you liked this podcast. If you did and want to hear more. I’d appreciate it if you would either subscribe to this channel on YouTube, or connect with your favorite platform through my website at www.thehydrogenpodcast.com. Thanks for listening. I very much appreciate it. Have a great day.
