ONGC, India’s largest state-owned oil & gas company, is planning to spend 800bn-850bn rupees ($9.6bn-10.2bn) on developing two million tons of green ammonia annual production capacity by 2035.
The firm’s head of renewables, Harsh Nupur Joshi, revealed the investment plan, in which he outlined the ambition to develop two projects, each one million tons a year, mainly in partnership with other companies.
Partnering with companies that have expertise in handling such kinds of projects is required because for green ammonia and green hydrogen projects you require huge renewable-energy requirements,” he said, estimating 4.5-5 GW of power would be needed to produce one million tons a year of ammonia.
In June 2022, ONGC announced a memorandum of understanding with renewables developer Greenko to jointly develop a 1.3 GW electrolyser facility supplying one million tons a year of green ammonia production.
The firm has also more recently floated plans for a one-million-tons-a-year renewable NH3 facility in the port city of Mangalore — although it is unclear whether this is being jointly developed with Greenko or is a separate project.
However, Joshi added that “discussions are in a very advanced stage for forming an alliance”, floating a timeline of three to four months for a joint venture with an undisclosed partner to be formally set up.
“As far as the green hydrogen and green ammonia plants are concerned, they will be coming up by 2027,” he said.
ONGC has also not bid into the first Indian auction for green hydrogen or electrolyser manufacturing subsidies, likely due to the pre-close stage of its joint venture.
Joshi also noted that given alkaline electrolysers are the most mature technology, “current plants will be alkaline and maybe in the next phase, based on the results of this, it may remain alkaline only or PEM."
