Amnah, the multinational consortium that signed agreements last week to develop a major green hydrogen project in the Sultanate of Oman, estimates investments in the venture to total around $6 billion at full capacity.

Last Thursday, Amnah was named the winner of the first land block (Z1-01) offered by Hydrom, the orchestrator and master planner of Oman’s green hydrogen industry, in the maiden round of an international auction process. The 320 sq km block is located in Duqm, with downstream elements to be established at the Port of Duqm.

Amnah comprises Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), a Danish-based global leader in renewable energy investments; Blue Power Partners (BPP), specialists in solar and wind projects; and Al Khadra – part of Oman’s Hind Bahwan Group.

Leading the consortium is CIP, according to Karsten Plauborg, Partner at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. “We are a fund manager, managing funds on behalf of pension funds, life insurance companies, and so on, and we invest in renewable energy projects. CIP is the Primary Member of the consortium, but for sure, we will add new partners to the Amnah Consortium as we progress.”

Speaking to the Observer, Plauborg described the project as immense in scale. “It’s an absolutely massive project – nothing has been built on this scale in renewable energy anywhere before. That also means you have to be really humble towards the task ahead. We cannot leave any stone unturned; we will have to be really diligent here.”

Given the scale of the project, total investment is estimated at around $6 billion with an expected capacity of 215,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of green hydrogen, he said.

Going forward, Plauberg foresees more local and international companies joining the consortium, each with specialist expertise to support the delivery of the complex project. “We will have to bring in other members into the consortium as well,” he said. “CIP’s expertise is in building and constructing complex renewable energy projects. Blue Power Partners is a world leader in modeling, and quantifying solar and wind resources, and modeling this into processing facilities. Al Khadra has extensive local experience that we will need to forge strategic partnerships including EPC and construction.”

Amnah’s green molecule output is primarily earmarked for local consumption as energy feedstock for new steel plants slated to be developed in Duqm. Signing offtake agreements with these and other customers will be key to the early success of the project, Plauberg pointed out.

“The offtaker will ultimately play a crucial role, of course, in the whole financing of the project, et cetera. So getting the offtaker in place will be the first critical milestone of the project. We are working towards it.”

Another key objective of the consortium is to support localisation and In-Country Value (ICV) development. “ICV has been a key focus for the Omani government and our proposal is focused a lot on optimizing the in-country value. For sure, ICV is part of our commitment to the government, this includes facilitation of research programmes, educational training and supporting competence development,” he explained.

Having sewn the initial deals with Hydrom on the project, the consortium will be firming up the development plan in the coming period, said Plauborg. “A huge part of that will be to basically lay out the critical path of the project. There will also be interdependencies on the offtake that need to be sorted out. Then we will start the wind and solar measurement campaigns to make sure we understand exactly the quality of the resources. And we will also engage, at a deeper level, with banks to fully understand the bankability issues that we will face for the project.”

Asked if a Final Investment Decision (FID) is targeted soon, Plauberg added: “There's a lot of preparation necessary to get there, and we will need to undertake both a pre-FEED and post-FEED to get there.”

 

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