Oman energy profile
Oman — auctioning the desert to build a hydrogen economy
~50,000 km²
Land allocated for hydrogen projects
1.38 MT/yr
Committed hydrogen production target by 2030
30 GW
Electrolyzer capacity target by 2040
$50 Bn+
Estimated investment needed for 2030 target
H2Oman and the auction programme
How Oman turned desert land into a hydrogen marketplace
The flagship ACWA Power project:
The H2Oman Project, a joint development agreement signed in 2022 between Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power, Oman's state energy company OQ, and US industrial gas supplier Air Products, targets approximately 1 million tonnes of green ammonia a year from a multi-billion-dollar facility in Salalah, Dhofar — integrating solar and wind power, energy storage, hydrogen electrolysis, and on-site ammonia production. All three partners share equal ownership, and ACWA Power brings backing from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds.
The H2Oman Project, a joint development agreement signed in 2022 between Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power, Oman's state energy company OQ, and US industrial gas supplier Air Products, targets approximately 1 million tonnes of green ammonia a year from a multi-billion-dollar facility in Salalah, Dhofar — integrating solar and wind power, energy storage, hydrogen electrolysis, and on-site ammonia production. All three partners share equal ownership, and ACWA Power brings backing from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds.
An auction system, not a single mega-project:
Rather than building everything itself, Oman created Hydrom — a state entity empowered by a 2023 royal decree to auction off blocks of the roughly 50,000 km² allocated across Duqm, Dhofar, and Al Jazir. Two rounds have already been auctioned: the first (2023) drew about $30 billion in commitments across five projects targeting 750,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year; the second (April 2024) added an EDF/J-POWER-led project and an Actis/Fortescue project worth a combined $11 billion, pushing Oman's total committed 2030 target to roughly 1.38 million tonnes a year.
Rather than building everything itself, Oman created Hydrom — a state entity empowered by a 2023 royal decree to auction off blocks of the roughly 50,000 km² allocated across Duqm, Dhofar, and Al Jazir. Two rounds have already been auctioned: the first (2023) drew about $30 billion in commitments across five projects targeting 750,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year; the second (April 2024) added an EDF/J-POWER-led project and an Actis/Fortescue project worth a combined $11 billion, pushing Oman's total committed 2030 target to roughly 1.38 million tonnes a year.
Why a small oil producer is betting on hydrogen
Diversification, and a crowded Gulf hydrogen race
Beyond ACWA Power — a genuinely dense project pipeline:
Oman's hydrogen ambitions extend well beyond a single flagship deal. India's ACME committed $3.5 billion to a Port of Duqm ammonia project targeting roughly 900,000 tonnes annually at scale; a proposed Green Energy Oman/Worley project would deploy up to 25 GW of solar and wind to produce 1.8 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year, among the largest such projects proposed anywhere in the world; and in October 2023, Oman Shell was selected to build a "blue" hydrogen and ammonia plant — made from natural gas with carbon capture rather than electrolysis — as a nearer-term bridge technology alongside the longer-horizon green build-out.
Oman's hydrogen ambitions extend well beyond a single flagship deal. India's ACME committed $3.5 billion to a Port of Duqm ammonia project targeting roughly 900,000 tonnes annually at scale; a proposed Green Energy Oman/Worley project would deploy up to 25 GW of solar and wind to produce 1.8 million tonnes of green hydrogen a year, among the largest such projects proposed anywhere in the world; and in October 2023, Oman Shell was selected to build a "blue" hydrogen and ammonia plant — made from natural gas with carbon capture rather than electrolysis — as a nearer-term bridge technology alongside the longer-horizon green build-out.
Diversification with fiscal results already showing:
Unlike Saudi Arabia's NEOM or the UAE's Masdar, Oman is a comparatively modest oil producer pursuing hydrogen as a deliberate hedge against oil dependence, and the broader diversification push already has measurable results: Oman cut public debt-to-GDP from roughly 68% in 2020 to roughly 37% in 2025, and Fitch upgraded the country to investment grade (BBB-) in 2024, citing improved fiscal discipline. Whether hydrogen exports can scale to match Oman's oil-era revenue remains an open, multi-decade question — but the auctioned land, signed contracts, and credit upgrades suggest the strategy is being taken seriously by both the government and outside capital.
Unlike Saudi Arabia's NEOM or the UAE's Masdar, Oman is a comparatively modest oil producer pursuing hydrogen as a deliberate hedge against oil dependence, and the broader diversification push already has measurable results: Oman cut public debt-to-GDP from roughly 68% in 2020 to roughly 37% in 2025, and Fitch upgraded the country to investment grade (BBB-) in 2024, citing improved fiscal discipline. Whether hydrogen exports can scale to match Oman's oil-era revenue remains an open, multi-decade question — but the auctioned land, signed contracts, and credit upgrades suggest the strategy is being taken seriously by both the government and outside capital.
Questions
Questions about Omani energy
Why is Oman auctioning land to multiple different hydrogen developers instead of building one national project?
It comes down to risk-sharing and speed. Green hydrogen at this scale is still a young industry — costs, technologies, and export markets are all evolving quickly, and no single company or government has fully proven what the winning combination of electrolyzer technology, renewable mix, and export product (hydrogen, ammonia, or something else) will look like at commercial scale. By auctioning separate land blocks to different international developers — ACWA Power, ACME, EDF, Actis/Fortescue, Shell — Oman spreads that technology and execution risk across several well-capitalised players rather than betting the whole strategy on one partner or one approach. It also lets Oman capture competitive tension in the bidding process itself, since developers compete on price and technical approach for each block, and lets the country build a genuinely diversified hydrogen export portfolio (different partners often target different buyer markets) rather than depending on a single company's relationships and supply chains. The tradeoff is coordination complexity — multiple parallel projects each need their own infrastructure, workforce, and in some cases shared export capacity at ports like Salalah and Duqm — but for a country trying to establish an entirely new export industry from scratch, spreading the bet across several serious players is a more common approach than concentrating it in one place. Source: Green Hydrogen Organisation (GH2) · Hydrom · Onero Institute.
Provenance
Attribution and citation
- Sources
- Green Hydrogen Organisation (GH2) · Oxford Business Group Oman 2025 Report · Hydrom · AGSI · Onero Institute · Noria Research · The National · Gulf Business · Zawya · Middle East Insider
- Cite as
- "Oman Energy Profile — Complete Reference", The Energy Codex, https://thecodex.expert/energy/countries/oman/, last updated .