India's Acme Group has signed an investment agreement covering the second and third phases of its Duqm green hydrogen project, at OMR 1.6bn ($4.2bn). It joins eight blocks already awarded through Hydrom's land auctions, carrying more than $49bn of stated commitments — and not one of those projects has yet taken a final investment decision.
India's Acme Group has signed an investment agreement covering the second and third phases of its green hydrogen and ammonia project at Duqm, a development the company values at OMR 1.6bn, about $4.2bn, spread across a 10 square kilometre site. It is the largest single item in the package of agreements Oman signed for the Duqm zone this week, and the clearest signal yet that the country's hydrogen programme is still growing on paper faster than it is on the ground.
Acme's first Duqm phase is a $3.5bn scheme powered by three gigawatts of solar and 500 megawatts of wind, designed to produce up to 900,000 tonnes a year of green ammonia. The second and third phases extend it. Neither the expansion nor the original phase has been declared as having reached a final investment decision.
That is the defining fact about Oman's hydrogen sector in 2026, and it is easy to lose behind the numbers. The programme is administered by Hydrom, formally Hydrogen Oman SPC, a subsidiary of Energy Development Oman, which was set up to auction blocks of land with strong combined solar and wind resource on long-term development agreements. Winning developers commit to local employment and skills obligations and to starting production before 2030. Two auction rounds, covering Duqm in Al Wusta and blocks in Dhofar, have awarded eight large-scale projects carrying stated investment above $49bn and a combined target of more than one million tonnes a year of hydrogen by 2030.
The named consortia are serious counterparties. Green Energy Oman brings together OQ, Oman Shell, Kuwait's EnerTech, InterContinental Energy and Golden Wellspring Wealth Trading, targeting up to 150,000 tonnes a year of hydrogen from four gigawatts of renewables. Hyport Duqm is held by bp with 49 percent alongside OQ Alternative Energy and Belgium's DEME with 25.5 percent each, and plans a first phase of roughly 500 megawatts of electrolysis supported by about 1.3 gigawatts of solar and wind, producing around 60,000 tonnes a year of hydrogen convertible into some 330,000 tonnes of ammonia. In Dhofar, two projects signed in 2024 and valued at about $11bn involve consortia including EDF, J-Power and Yamna, and Actis with Fortescue, with plans in the range of four to four and a half gigawatts of renewable capacity.
A third auction round, launched in April 2025, offered a block of up to 300 square kilometres at Duqm with a minimum project footprint of 100 square kilometres, each parcel expected to support at least 50,000 tonnes a year of hydrogen. Bids were due at the end of January this year, with awards expected in the second quarter.
What none of this yet includes is a plant. Oman's own working expectation is that the first final investment decision in the programme lands in 2026 or 2027, with Hyport Duqm the most likely first mover and production around 2030. Everything signed to date conveys land, a development obligation and a timetable. It does not commit an electrolyser order, and it does not oblige anyone to build if the economics do not close.
The obstacle is offtake, and it is the same obstacle everywhere in the sector. Hyport Duqm has a cooperation agreement with Uniper under which the German utility joined the project team and agreed to negotiate exclusive green ammonia offtake, which is an agreement to negotiate rather than a contract to buy. Green ammonia produced from dedicated renewables and electrolysis costs materially more than the grey product made from natural gas, and until buyers in Japan, South Korea or Europe sign volume contracts at prices that cover that gap, lenders will not fund the plants and developers will not place the orders.
Oman's advantages in that competition are real and largely physical. The Duqm and Dhofar sites have solar and wind resource that peak at different times of day, which lifts the combined capacity factor and cuts the amount of storage or curtailment a project has to absorb. Land is available at scale and cheaply. Ammonia export infrastructure exists at Duqm and Salalah, both on the Arabian Sea and outside the Strait of Hormuz, a distinction that has become considerably more valuable this year. And the auction framework itself, with published block terms and a single counterparty, is clearer than most of what is on offer regionally.
The advantages are not enough on their own. Announced project pipelines in green hydrogen have run far ahead of built capacity worldwide, and several developers have quietly written down or abandoned schemes at a comparable stage to Oman's. The honest measure of the programme this year is not the $49bn figure or the 2030 target. It is whether one of the eight awarded blocks converts into a financed, contracted, under-construction plant. Until that happens, Oman has a well-run land allocation system and a great deal of intent.