Wabash Valley Resources, the developer of a blue ammonia project in Indiana, has engaged Jefferies to raise equity capital to complete the capital stack for the roughly $2.4bn facility.
The developer was recently granted a $1.56bn conditional loan commitment from the U.S. DOE, and has another roughly $600m in equity commitments, leaving around $200m yet to be raised, Simon Greenshields, president at Phibro, one of the owners of the project, said in a phone interview.
The firm is targeting industrial and strategic partners that are making investments in the space, he added.
The project, in West Terre Haute, Indiana, will repurpose an industrial gasifier to utilize petcoke to produce 500,000 tons per year of anhydrous ammonia, while also capturing and storing the plant’s CO2 emissions. It was granted a Class VI carbon dioxide injection permit from the EPA earlier this year.
Investors in Wabash include OGCI Climate Investments, which made an investment in 2019, and Nikola, which bought a 20% interest in the project for $50m in 2022.
Greenshields declined to comment on offtake from the project, but the DOE press release notes that Wabash would be the first domestic producer located in the Corn Belt to produce low-carbon ammonia for local farmers and co-ops.
Production from the facility would displace outside sources of ammonia, of which the U.S. imports roughly 2 million tons per year.
