Air Products executives today said the plant providing hydrogen to Gulf Coast Ammonia has come onstream and is generating revenues.
Pennsylvania-based Air Products invested $500m into the steam methane reformer and hydrogen pipeline capacity, as well as an air separation unit for nitrogen and a steam turbine unit for the GCA world-scale ammonia plant.
Lotus Infrastructure and Mabanaft GmbH own the GCA facility and provided equity for the project. The project financing closed on December 30, 2019.
Jefferies last year was leading a sale of the plant, which was paused until it reached commercial operations. An official at Lotus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The approximately 175 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) SMR built by Air Products will include the addition of over 30 miles of hydrogen pipeline from Texas City to Baytown, to be connected to its Gulf Coast Pipeline system, the company announced previously. The GCA project will use approximately 270 mmscfd of hydrogen from the SMR and Gulf Coast Pipeline.
GCA’s ammonia facility, which will produce approximately 3,600 metric tons per day of ammonia, will also receive Air Products’ supply of approximately 90 mmscfd of nitrogen from a new ASU to be built and operated at the Texas City site.
While the hydrogen plant is onstream, Air Products CEO Seifi Ghasemi today declined to comment on the ammonia portion of the project, saying he’s like the owners of that facility to make a statement if necessary.
