Asyad Drydock – part of wholly state-owned Asyad Group – says it is weighing a landmark foray into industrial manufacturing with an eye on the mammoth opportunities linked to the supply of hardware for the mega green hydrogen schemes due to be implemented in Oman over the coming decades.
Oman is targeting the production of a world-scale 8 million tonnes per annum of green hydrogen by the year 2050, partly for local consumption and the rest for export. To achieve this goal, investments of an estimated $140 billion will be required towards, among other inputs, the procurement and installation of prodigious quantities of hardware: around 3 million solar panels, 10,000 wind turbines, 5,200 electrolyzer units and about 180 gigawatts of renewable energy, in addition to water desalination capacity, pipeline infrastructure, storage tanks, and other equipment at the downstream end.
Asyad Drydock, which recently began fabricating - for the first time - small steel ships at its modern ship repair yard at Duqm, is now eyeing a share of the multibillion dollar market for equipment and hardware that will constitute the building blocks of the future green hydrogen industry.
“We are exploring opportunities to create an industrial division that will cater for renewables,” said Dr Ibrahim al Nadhairi (pictured), CEO of Asyad Shipping & Drydock. “Take, for instance, wind turbines: their towers are currently imported, but at Asyad Drydock, we have high-capacity workshops equipped with the technology and skilled human resources to manufacture them. This is the way forward for the Drydock: targeting all those projects, from wind and solar to hydrogen, whose equipment can be made in Oman, thereby seizing growth opportunities and acting as an enabler of sustainability in Oman and beyond.”
Asyad Drydock’s ambitions to support Oman’s renewable hydrogen industry were highlighted in a recent article featured in The Energy Year, a UK-based energy-centric news portal.
In the interview, Al Nadhairi noted that Asyad Drydock’s location in the Port of Duqm places it within relative proximity of the massive land blocks delineated by Oman’s authorities in Duqm and the wider Al Wusta Governorate, for the establishment of the giant hydrogen schemes.
“Asyad Drydock operates within the Special Economic Zone at Duqm (SEZAD), which gives us an unparalleled competitive advantage with regard to both the flexibility we can offer and the costs we need to sustain,” he said.
“So, the raw material reaches the Port of Duqm then goes straight to our workshops, where the final product is built then exported by our ships. Instead of trucking from outside, we manufacture almost everything in Duqm, and that is the height of efficiency,” he stated.
Asyad Drydock’s announcement is expected to be warmly welcomed by Omani authorities which have been keen to unlock In-Country Value (ICV) opportunities stemming from the emergence of a new industry around renewable hydrogen in Oman.
A dedicated task force within the Ministry of Energy and Minerals is presently studying these opportunities in collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, Hydrom, OQ Group and other stakeholders.
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