The feasibility study for the Middle East’s largest green hydrogen project in Oman will be completed by the end of 2022, a senior official of Oman’s state-owned integrated energy giant OQ said. 

Located south of Duqm, the project will be powered by 25 gigawatts of solar and wind energy and will produce 1.8 metric tonnes of green hydrogen or 10 metric tonnes of ammonia at full capacity.  

Ahmed Al Rawas, project manager for Green Energy Oman (GEO), OQ Alternative Energy, said the project would be developed over five years, build in three phases over 10 years, and operated for over 50 years. 

 “FID (final investment decision) is targeted for early 2026 and construction is expected to begin in 2027m” he said, speaking at the Oman Green Hydrogen Summit on Tuesday. 

On the progress made so far, he said, “the wind masts located in eight different locations in Al Wusta, Dhofar, to measure the wind speed have concluded more than one year of data. We have started the energy yield assessment study and the environmental social impact study and hope to complete the feasibility study by end of next year”.  

“The project is long term with construction and expenditure balanced against market demand. The progressive construction of the solar and wind capacities, and the downstream expansion will happen parallelly over 10 years. Opportunities for life extension, repowering and operations exist for a long time,” he said.  

Speaking about the in-country value generation from the project, he said, “Manufacturing of electrolysers has a high potential for localisation due to technology maturity, low industry development and its attractive share of value - 20-40 percent of the total cost in the value chain”. 

He said additional localisation opportunities exist in engineering and design in the medium to long term if human capabilities are set up and demand is significant. “All installation, operation and maintenance activities can be localised. R&D should be promoted to become technology leaders in electrolysers,” he said. 

The project is jointly owned by Oman’s state-owned integrated energy giant OQ, Kuwait Investment Authority owned Enertech, and Intercontinental Energy, a developer of large-scale hydrogen projects globally.  

(Reporting by Sowmya Sundar; Editing by Anoop Menon) 

(anoop.menon@refinitiv.com

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