Woodside's million-tonne Beaumont blue ammonia project is now 97% complete
Source：hydrogeninsight
The massive Beaumont New Ammonia project in Texas — which will be the largest of its kind when it starts producing clean molecules early next year — is now 97% complete, the project’s Australian owner, Woodside Energy, has revealed.
Commissioning on critical equipment at the 1.1 million tonnes-per-year ammonia production facility is scheduled to begin this month ahead of first production, which is expected by the end of this year.
Key systems are now operational, Woodside said, while catalyst loading into the ammonia converter is under way.
Initial ammonia volumes will be made from unabated fossil fuels, while the company waits for an adjacent blue hydrogen plant, fitted with an autothermal reformer and currently being built by Linde, to come on line.
Beaumont will begin producing blue ammonia for the first time once these volumes become available, which Woodside expects in early 2026.
Project construction on the ammonia facility is being carried out by Beaumont’s former owner, Dutch ammonia producer OCI, which sold the project (not including the blue hydrogen plant) to Woodside in 2024 for $2.35bn.
Woodside has so far paid $1.88bn (80%), and is set to pay the remaining $470m (20%) when OCI delivers a fully operational, fully-staffed plant next year.
OCI stated in September that it has so far spent around $1.3bn building the plant, with total project cost expected to be around $1.6bn, including contingencies.
Woodside has a supply contract in place for blue H2 and nitrogen from Linde, which in turn is relying on ExxonMobil to complete construction, scheduled for the end of this year, of its nearby Rose carbon storage facilities to sequester emissions captured from the hydrogen plant.
Linde has not given any progress reports on the construction of the Beaumont blue hydrogen plant and had not responded to queries from Hydrogen Insight at the time of publication.