Oman and India find hydrogen common ground

The sultanate’s pitch to international clean fuel investors has been heard by the energy-thirsty Asian behemoth

Muscat has been swiftly playing catch-up in renewables over the past two years—driven by a longstanding gas shortage, falling solar power costs and global decarbonisation pressure—and more recently it has been talking about expanding its clean energy drive into the hydrogen space. Meanwhile, New Delhi, a close political and trading partner, formally embarked in February on a National Hydrogen Mission to replace fossil fuels with the new energy source. In early March, the twin ambitions were happily married—spawning an agreement for Indian conglomerate Acme to invest some $2.5bn in developing a 2,200t/d green hydrogen and ammonia production plant at Duqm, on the sultanate’s central east coast