Sohar Port and Freezone may become the Middle East’s first green hydrogen generation hub powered by several gigawatts of solar. The project is being developed with the cooperation of the Port of Rotterdam, which owns a 50% stake in Sohar Port and Freezone, and Germany-based hydrogen specialist Hydrogen Rise AG. This new hydrogen hub should be mostly powered by several solar plants under development in the port’s area. Apart from our small scale solar park powering our headquarters in Sohar, we are planning larger, utility scale power generation facilities within the industrial port and the adjoining free zone in line with our strategy to offer competitively priced, solar photovoltaics-based electricity to industrial end-users and other tenants operating within the hub.
Plan envisages the deployment or around 3.5 GW of PV capacity, which is equivalent to the port’s total electricity consumption. 300 MW of this capacity will be deployed by the Anglo-Dutch oil and gas provider Shell, which in April 2019 announced a plan to build its first 25 MW PV plant at a carbon ferrochrome smelter facility owned by Al Tamman Indsil Ferrochrome LLC. Portuguese and Dutch governments announced in September a plan to connect the hydrogen project of Sines, in Portugal, to the Port of Rotterdam and to develop a strategic export-import value chain to ensure the production and transport of green hydrogen to the Netherlands and its hinterland.