US clean hydrogen needs oil major backing

Hydrogen sector will struggle to reach required scale without commitment of big oil, US DoE official tells Hydrogen Americas Summit

The US clean hydrogen sector will struggle to scale up significantly until the country’s oil majors are fully behind it, according to a senior US Department of Energy (DoE) official. No US refineries have so far signed clean hydrogen offtake deals, highlighting the majors’ reluctance to back the sector, Jigar Shah, director of the Loan Programs Office at the DoE, told the Hydrogen Americas Summit. “I do not see any major traditional players involved in hydrogen, none whatsoever, none of the big oil majors,” he says. “Until you see the really large incumbents say: ‘We are actually going to bet the company on this conversion’, [then] you are not going to see the level of growth to be able to s