io con­sult­ing (io) has been award­ed a con­tract for a bank­able fea­si­bil­i­ty study (BFS) by New­Gen En­er­gy Lim­it­ed (New­Gen) to sup­port de­vel­op­ment of a pro­posed car­bon-neu­tral/green hy­dro­gen pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty in T&T.

The hy­dro­gen out­put from the project is in­tend­ed as a “green” in­put to am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion at the Trinidad Ni­tro­gen Com­pa­ny (Trin­gen) fa­cil­i­ties in the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

This is a joint ven­ture of Bak­er Hugh­es and Mc­Der­mott.

The project will fo­cus on pro­duc­tion of hy­dro­gen from an in­dus­tri­al elec­trol­y­sis process pow­ered by car­bon-neu­tral elec­tric­i­ty and “green” elec­tric­i­ty from re­new­able sources. By har­ness­ing re­new­able nat­ur­al re­sources and ex­cess heat from T&T’s pow­er plants it is hoped the New­Gen project will con­tribute to T&T en­er­gy tran­si­tion of its hy­dro­car­bon-based in­dus­tri­al com­plex.

The Busi­ness Guardian last week re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that New­Gen had signed an MOU with Trin­gen for the pro­duc­tion and use of hy­dro­gen in its am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion.

“There are sig­nif­i­cant and pos­i­tive im­pli­ca­tions for this project. Once suc­cess­ful, the project will open the door to green­er petro­chem­i­cal prod­ucts from Trinidad & To­ba­go, in­clud­ing green and car­bon-neu­tral am­mo­nia,” Philip Julien, New­Gen’s Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor said. “We se­lect­ed io be­cause they of­fered the best com­bi­na­tion of ex­per­tise, deep do­main tech­ni­cal know-how and an ag­ile project ap­proach which will bring a ro­bust so­lu­tion for the project.“

Par­ent com­pa­nies - Bak­er Hugh­es and Mc­Der­mott – have a long his­to­ry of in­volve­ment along the en­tire val­ue chain of the Trinidad and To­ba­go en­er­gy sec­tor. This, along with their demon­strat­ed abil­i­ty in ear­ly front end project work and in de­liv­er­ing tech­no-eco­nom­ic ex­per­tise for sim­i­lar type projects is said to have made it a log­i­cal fit for the New­Gen Project.

Among oth­er un­der­tak­ings, io will per­form a tech­ni­cal due dili­gence as­sess­ment which will iden­ti­fy, eval­u­ate and ex­plore com­mer­cial­ly avail­able elec­trol­y­sis tech­nolo­gies to de­ter­mine the op­ti­mum tech­nol­o­gy and sup­port­ing fa­cil­i­ties re­quired to progress to the next project stage.

Once com­plet­ed, the re­sults of this study will be used in part to sup­port and in­form any re­lat­ed de­ci­sions by Trin­gen as the pro­posed off-tak­er of an es­ti­mat­ed 27,000 met­ric tonnes per year of car­bon-neu­tral and green hy­dro­gen. The Trin­gen fa­cil­i­ty is joint­ly owned by the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and Yara.

Com­ment­ing on the award, Richard Dyson, CEO of io con­sult­ing said, “io is de­light­ed to have been en­gaged by New­Gen on this piv­otal project for Trinidad & To­ba­go and to be a part of this in­no­v­a­tive move to­wards en­er­gy tran­si­tion.” He ex­plained that ‘io will draw on its unique com­bi­na­tion of tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties, proven ex­per­tise and sound prac­tices in front end load­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly de­liv­er this project.”