One of the primary critiques of blue hydrogen production is that it is made using fossil gas, the extraction of which carries a high emissions cost, either through flaring (causing carbon dioxide emissions) or methane leaking or venting. Methane is a highly potent greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 27-30 times that of carbon dioxide over 100 years.

Some of the gas used to make blue hydrogen (and subsequently ammonia) at the Beaumont complex will be certified by Project Canary, a scientist-run data programme that verifies whether gas has been produced with low upstream emissions, OCI tells Hydrogen Insight.

Along with the scheme’s advertised Scope 1 carbon capture rate of 95% (a figure which is yet to be achieved by any commercial-scale CCS plant in the world), this will allow OCI’s Beaumont-produced blue ammonia to achieve carbon savings of 70% compared to grey hydrogen, says Lebada — exactly the threshold for it to qualify as low-carbon hydrogen under EU rules.

The boiler-plate 95% capture rate will be partially offset by the ammonia plant's vast energy needs, which will be met by gas and grid electricity, leading to the well-to-wake figure of 70%.

Project Canary’s “responsibly-sourced gas” is becoming more plentiful, Lebada adds, and the premium for sourcing it, compared to Texas’s non-verified gas supply, is coming down to around $0.05-0.10/MMBtu — that’s around 2-4% of today’s spot-traded US gas.

But, inevitably, not all of the Beaumont blue hydrogen feedstock gas will come from Project Canary, and Texan producers in particular have an ambivalent record of flaring and venting uneconomic natural gas.

This is partly because so much of Texan gas production occurs as a by-product of more lucrative oil extraction.

Federal regulation has been mixed — plans to clamp down on venting and introduce regulations to monitor and mitigate leaks were nixed by the administration of former president Donald Trump. However, the current administration has now finalised rules to phase out routine flaring, and oblige companies to fix leaks.

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