UK refiner Essar Oil signs purchase deal with Vertex Hydrogen

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – British refiner Essar Oil has signed a deal with Vertex Hydrogen to buy more than 280 megawatts of hydrogen as it seeks to decarbonise its production facilities, it said on Wednesday.

Essar plans to build two blue hydrogen plants. Produced from natural gas and steam, blue hydrogen is not emissions-free, but its carbon emissions are captured, stored and used in other applications.

Deepak Maheshwari, Essar’s UK chief executive, said the hydrogen purchase deal will help to “de-risk the project while also securing supply for our production processes into the future and thereby reducing our carbon footprint”.

Vertex Hydrogen, a joint venture between Essar and Progressive Energy, is setting up a large-scale blue hydrogen production hub in the UK.

(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; Editing by David Goodman)