Not to be confused with OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), is OAPEC.

The latter is the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), and has eleven members: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. This week, it unveiled “its new Hydrogen Guidance Initiative”.

The initiative points towards the strategic importance of hydrogen that’s perceived in the region, and has several main thrusts.

One is to create “co-operation and knowledge exchange through a joint Arab platform for the exchange of data and experiences”, while another extends this further afield by also “seeking co-operation with European and international bodies to transfer expertise”.

In order not to just follow developments elsewhere, OAPEC wants to see “innovation through research programmes in hydrogen production technologies” (both blue and green). And to create budding hydrogen enthusiasts, it also proposes “integrating hydrogen into university curriculums and launching vocational training programmes”.

For practical deployment of hydrogen at scale, “integration with renewable energy” is highlighted, as is the need for studies “to develop H2 transport and storage networks, including the utilisation of existing gas networks”.

One country in the region which is not a member of OAPEC is Oman.

Nevertheless, it too has ambitions on hydrogen transport and has unveiled plans for “hydrogen pipelines spanning 300-400km to serve its green hydrogen industry”. These will be complemented by “a CO2 transport network”.

Deployment “will follow a phased approach, beginning with regional pipelines that can later be expanded into a nationwide network”. Natural gas transmission operator OQ Gas Networks doesn’t intend to hang about for long on this plan, with “funding expected to be finalised by 2027”.

In the UK, one company which had been hanging around for a while on its own ambitious plans was oil and gas firm Eni.

Eni’s aim is to build and operate “the CO2 transport and storage system (T&S) of the HyNet industrial Cluster” in the northwest of the country. Fortunately, this infrastructure, the Liverpool Bay CCS Project, has now “reached financial close with the UK Government’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)”.

As a result, the project can now “move into the construction phase”, creating lots of lovely “new production chains and jobs” as a result (“in the construction phase alone, estimated to be about 2,000 people”).

It will also create “the backbone of the HyNet Cluster”, transporting carbon dioxide captured in the region “through new and repurposed infrastructure to safe and permanent storage in Eni’s depleted natural gas reservoirs”. The project will create “a storage capacity of 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year in the first phase, and the potential to increase to 10 million tonnes of CO2 per year in the 2030s”.

The linkage with hydrogen should be clear from the name of the cluster which it serves: HyNet. In particular, a big part of the latter is blue hydrogen production, for which CCS infrastructure is obviously a necessity.

So this news should in turn cheer up EET, which plans to build 350MW of blue hydrogen production capacity in the first phase, as part of HyNet. EET had previously stated that its own FID was “likely in September 2025”. Having certainty over somewhere to put its captured CO2 will obviously help achieve this.

Eni reckons construction for the Liverpool Bay CCS project “is expected to commence this year, ready for planned start-up in 2028”.