Colombian oil & gas firm Ecopetrol has announced it will spend $28.5m on a new green hydrogen facility at its Cartagena refinery.
The company says the plant will be largest in Latin America once commissioned in 2026, although it will only have 5MW of electrolysis capacity.
Ecopetrol, which is majority owned by the government, currently produces around 130,000 tonnes of primarily grey hydrogena year, which means that the 800 tonnes of renewable H2 produced by the electrolyser annually will only represent less than 1% of today’s production.
However, Ecopetrol anticipates that hydrogen demand within Colombia could increase to 1.3 million tonnes a year by 2040, by which time its low-carbon H2 business could generate $400m-485m in annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda).
To date, the largest electrolyser installed in South America is the 1.2MW green hydrogen production facility at the Haru Oni e-fuels plant in Chile, developed by HIF Global.
Ecopetrol had in 2022 run a three-month pilot of a 50kW proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyser at the Cartagena refinery.
The Colombian company had in April 2023 completed a feasibility study for 60MW of electrolyser capacity across two refineries, Cartagena and Barrancabermeja, although the latter is still being evaluated ahead of a final investment decision.
Ecopetrol had this summer suggested that green hydrogen in Colombia could cost just $4.50/kg to produce in the 2030s, competitive with prices in the European market.
The Colombian government estimated in a 2021 strategy that green hydrogen could cost $2.20-3.70/kg to produce by 2030, with the cheapest production in the north of the country where the Cartagena refinery is located.
Colombia more broadly targets 1-3GW of electrolyser capacity by 2030.
