RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Australian Fortescue mining company on Monday (01) announced it will invest US$8.4 billion in the South American country to develop a green hydrogen production project by 2028, following a meeting with high-level officials of the Argentine government.
The announcement was made in the framework of the COP26 climate summit being held in Glasgow (United Kingdom), where Argentine President Alberto Fernández met with the Australian company’s top executives.
The announced investments will be allocated to the so-called Pampas project, which Fortescue will develop in the town of Sierra Grande, in the southern Argentine province of Río Negro, where the company has initiated prospecting work to produce green hydrogen on an industrial scale.
“This is the most important international investment announced in Argentina in the 21st century, in terms of size, numbers and transformation. Moreover, this investment is founding a new industry, green hydrogen,” said Argentina’s Minister of Productive Development Matías Kulfas.
In a press conference with company representatives, Kulfas emphasized that this project “places Argentina ahead in this field,” as the country “will be among the world’s main producers of this new fuel of the future.”
According to official sources, the goal is for Río Negro to become a global green hydrogen exporting hub by 2030, with an annual production capacity of 2.2 million tons, equivalent to almost 10% of the electric energy consumed by Germany in a year, for instance.
PROJECT STAGES
Fortescue Future Industries CEO for Latin America Agustín Pichot, former captain of the Argentine rugby team, pointed out that Argentina’s project is among the Australian company’s 5 most important global projects.
The prospecting initiated by the company seeks to analyze the wind quantity and quality, the project’s main energy source, which will use desalinated seawater to produce hydrogen.
Once wind and other factors are found to be satisfactory, the public consultations and procedures for the construction of the project will begin.
According to official sources, the pilot stage, with investments of some US$1.2 billion, will begin in 2022 and end in 2024, and aims to produce some 35,000 tons of green hydrogen, energy equivalent to supply 250,000 homes.
In the first production stage, with an investment of US$7.2 billion and which will run until 2028, some 215,000 tons of green hydrogen will be produced, the equivalent energy capacity to cover the electricity consumption of 1.6 million homes.
The entire project will create 15,000 direct and between 40,000 and 50,000 indirect jobs.