Page 7 - AsianOil Week 25 2022
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AsianOil COMMENTARY AsianOil
Its CEO, Seonghoon Woo, explained: “The The 40-tonne shipment was generated by
problem the company is solving is basically the Aramco and was made in collaboration with
problem of the battery,” noting that while bat- Saudi Arabian Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC)
teries are a good solution for small modes of and IEEJ.
transportation, they face practical limitations Aramco said that during the process of gen-
in heavier-fuel vehicles, including planes, ships erating the ammonia, it had captured 50 tonnes
and trucks. of carbon dioxide (CO2). Thirty tonnes will be
The company views ammonia as “an optimal used in methanol production at SABIC’s Ibn-
fuel for […] areas that have all proven difficult Sina facility, with the remainder to be used in
to decarbonise”, saying it aims to reduce roughly enhanced oil recovery (EOR) at Aramco’s ‘Uth-
5bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent of emissions by maniyah field.
2040 “while accelerating the global journey In a presentation, Aramco said that the
towards net zero by 2050”. production of blue ammonia had spanned Japanese firms
“The energy storage system we’ve built basi- the entire value chain, supporting the compa-
cally converts ammonia to electrons very effi- ny’s recent claims of investing in the circular Idemitsu, Inpex
ciently in a small footprint, so you can use it in economy. and Itochu last
different vehicles,” Woo said. Natural gas was taken from ‘Uthmaniyah and
For Aramco, the modest investment marks a converted to hydrogen at a dedicated facility in year received
step down the hydrogen value chain. Last year, Jubail, with the CO2 captured at a nearby facility
Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz and returned to ‘Uthmaniyah and sent to Jubail blue ammonia
bin Salman said that the giant Jafurah unconven- Methanol Plant. Nitrogen was added to the
tional gas basin would be leveraged to produce hydrogen at the Jubail Ammonia Plant to cre- cargoes.
blue hydrogen as the country seeks to extend its ate blue ammonia, which was then dispatched
leadership of the oil sector into hydrogen. by sea to Japan, where it will be separated and
“We are the biggest adventurers when it used to power the 50-kW Koriyama micro gas
comes to blue hydrogen … We’re putting our turbine, the 2-MW Yokohama gas turbine and a
money where our mouth is on hydrogen. We co-firing boiler in Aioi.
have a terrific gas base in Jafurah [and] we will However, Aramco’s chief technology officer,
use it to generate blue hydrogen,” he said. Ahmad al-Khowaiter, said in 2021 that while
This followed its entry into the sector along- the company would have “a large share” of the
side Japan’s Institute of Energy Economics (IEEJ) hydrogen market, he cautioned: “The scale up
in September 2020, when the company shipped isn’t going to happen before 2030. We’re not
its first cargo of blue ammonia to Japan to be going to see large volumes of blue ammonia
used in zero-carbon power generation. before then.”
Week 25 24•June•2022 www. NEWSBASE .com P7
