Building on its existing natural gas interests, as well as renewable energy potential in Egypt and Mauritania, BP is now looking to Africa to realize its global ambitions as a hydrogen producer.
BP's quest to capture 10% of the global low-carbon hydrogen market by 2030 is now turning to Africa, where over the past 2 months the supermajor has signed separate memorandums of understanding to explore opportunities to create hydrogen hubs in Egypt and Mauritania.
BP is committed to assessing the technical and commercial feasibility of developing a large-scale green hydrogen production and export center in Egypt in several phases, including a likely study of locations throughout the country and identification of best-in-class resources.
Among the signatories for Egypt were the country's New and Renewable Energy Authority, the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company, the General Authority of the Suez Canal Economic Zone and the Egyptian Sovereign Wealth Fund for Investment and Development.
Egypt and BP announced the deal on December 8, just one day after Cairo signed another agreement with local energy and utilities provider Taqa Arabia and its French partner, renewable energy producer Voltalia, to establish, finance and operate a 150 kiloton/year green hydrogen production plant.
The facility, near the port of Ain Sukhna in the Suez Canal Economic Zone, would have a total electrolysis capacity of 1 GW generated from a combined solar and wind power capacity of 2.7 GW. The Egyptian government would provide land for construction, Taqa reported in a press release.
Egypt : East and West export logistics, gas and renewable energy
Le projet Taqa-Voltalia « s’appuie sur notre portefeuille d’hydrogène vert et complète… notre mandat de transformer l’Égypte en un centre régional pour l’énergie verte », a déclaré Ayman Soliman, directeur général du fonds souverain du pays, qualifiant le fonds de « catalyseur (qui fournit) aux investisseurs une multitude de sources d’énergie renouvelables, un emplacement optimal pour l’exportation et un écosystème favorable aux investisseurs.
A month earlier, BP had signed a memorandum of understanding with Mauritania to explore the technical and commercial feasibility of large-scale green hydrogen production in the northwest African country bordering Algeria, Senegal and Mali.
The signing took place alongside the COP27 climate conference on November 8 in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh with Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani and Minister of Petroleum, Mines and Energy Abdessalam Ould Mohamed Saleh signing the agreement.
BP CEO Bernard Looney signed for BP, along with the company's executive vice presidents for gas and low-carbon energy, production and operations, and the senior vice president for Mauritania and Senegal.
« Nous développons déjà l’un des projets gaziers les plus innovants au monde avec le soutien du gouvernement mauritanien », a déclaré Anja-Isabel Dotzenrath, vice-présidente exécutive pour le gaz et l’énergie à faible émission de carbone, dans un communiqué de presse de BP. « Et nous avons maintenant l’intention d’étendre notre partenariat à l’énergie à faible émission de carbone en explorant le potentiel d’un développement mondial de l’hydrogène vert. »
Color wheel: you need blue to make green with time
Green hydrogen rightly gets the coverage because it is carbon-free and if the world had already scaled up enough renewable energy - wind, solar and/or nuclear - needed to power electrolysis technology that could release enough green hydrogen from water, it would be a definite win for the decarbonization agenda.
Le problème est qu’il n’y a tout simplement pas assez d’énergie renouvelable en place qui puisse être mise à l’échelle dans le temps pour atteindre même les objectifs d’émissions à court terme, et penser le contraire est « ridicule » selon les mots du président de l’Alliance européenne pour la recherche énergétique, Nils Røkke.
Røkke told RefillThe dogmatic view would be that we should focus only on green (hydrogen)... but then you'll miss all your emissions targets, I'm afraid, because it would take too long. to develop the amount of renewables you would need to produce hydrogen from (electrolysis).
The solution is to develop blue and green hydrogen simultaneously with the expectation that green hydrogen would become dominant over time, explained Røkke, who is also executive vice president for sustainability at SINTEF, Scandinavia's largest R&D institute.
BP seems in line with this strategy. It names blue hydrogen alongside green hydrogen as one of the company's five declared energy transition growth drivers currently being pursued in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Spain, the Middle East, the US, Australia and now potentially Africa.
Blue hydrogen is produced when natural gas undergoes a steam reforming process that releases hydrogen but also produces carbon dioxide as a byproduct that must be captured and stored using carbon capture and storage technologies.
In Mauritania and Senegal, BP has access to gas with its operator interests in the development of the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim liquefied natural gas (LNG) Phase 1 project along the Mauritania-Senegal border. The project was approved in 2018 and is expected to produce 2.3 mtpa of LNG, with production planned over 20 years.
BP holds a 62% operating interest in the BirAllah gas field (Block C8) and the Great Turtle Ahmeyim (Block C12), with Dallas-based independent Kosmos Energy holding a 28% interest and local interests controlling 10%.
Earlier in 2022, BP also signed an exploration and production sharing contract for the BirAllah gas resource in Mauritania, according to the BP website. In Senegal, BP also operates the offshore Saint-Louis Profond and Cayar Profond blocks with a majority interest.
In Egypt, BP claims to currently produce around 70% of the country's gas either directly or through its various partnerships. It operates the West Nile Delta gas development which currently produces about 900 MMcf/d of gas and 27,000 B/d of condensate.
The company also holds a 10% stake in the Shorouk concession which contains the super giant offshore Zohr gas field, the Egyptian equivalent of Israel's Leviathan field in the eastern Mediterranean.