Essar Oil UK inks offtake deal with Vertex Hydrogen

Source: Reuters

Essar Oil UK, promoted by the billionaire Ruia brothers, has signed an offtake agreement with Vertex Hydrogen for the supply of hydrogen to the company to decarbonise its processes. Vertex is a joint venture between Ravi and Shashi-Ruia promoted Essar Group and Progressive Energy which expects to deliver nearly 4GW of low carbon hydrogen by 2030—equivalent to 40 percent of the UK government’s national target. “By signing this hydrogen offtake agreement with Vertex Hydrogen, we are helping to de-risk the project, while also securing supply for our production processes into the future and thereby reducing our carbon footprint,” said Deepak Maheshwari, chief executive officer, Essar Oil UK. According to the agreement, Vertex will supply over 280 megawatts (MW) of hydrogen to Essar Oil UK which will be used to decarbonise the company’s existing production facilities including the new hydrogen-powered furnace which was delivered in August this year. The UK government in August had shortlisted the construction of the company’s hydrogen production plants and a separate carbon capture project at its site in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire. Essar, which aims to significantly reduce its emissions before the end of the decade, has pledged an investment of £1 billion into a range of energy efficiency, low-carbon energy, and carbon capture and storage initiatives, designed to decarbonise its production processes. As part of the HyNet Consortium, Vertex is developing the first large-scale, low-carbon hydrogen production hub in the UK. In its initial phases, the hub is expected to produce 1 GW of hydrogen and capture some 1.8 million tonnes of carbon per annum.