WA oil and gas company enters ‘green’ hydrogen market by acquiring stake in Patriot Hydrogen

Prominence Energy’s 20% acquisition of Australian green hydrogen business Patriot Hydrogen is to “complement” the company’s oil and gas activities, it said.

Patriot Hydrogen’s intention is to construct a ‘biomass to hydrogen’ plant at Port Anthony in Victoria. Patriot holds a binding term sheet to lease the site and construct the plant, which is expected to take around 12 months to be planned, constructed, commissioned and reach steady state production of two tonnes of hydrogen per day.

Patriot and its major oil and gas stakeholder Prominence join a growing number of not only Australian hydrogen projects, but specifically projects seeking to produce hydrogen by burning biomass – essentially wood. While burning wood emits carbon, it is classified as net zero because technically trees grow back and then can subsequently “recapture” the emitted carbon.

Patriot Hydrogen also plans to licence and develop its brand “Patriot 2 Hydrogen (P2H) units” which are modular and designed to bypass some of the infrastructure challenges associated with the sale and use of hydrogen.

Prominence Energy, a public company based in Perth (ASX: PRM) has set out to raise AU$3.2 million to facilitate not only the acquisition of Patriot Hydrogen but also its Bowsprit drilling program, an oil venture in Louisiana, United States.

“It is exciting to be drilling and appraising the upside potential of Bowsprit this year and announcing our first step into the hydrogen sector. We believe the Patriot investment is an exciting entry for PRM into the growing Australian Hydrogen sector,” Alexander Parks, Managing Director of Prominence Energy, said in a statement.

The growing investments of fossil fuel companies in Australia’s burgeoning hydrogen sector has caused concern in many circles, with a choir of voices warning that without proper oversight the green “future fuel” could become a fossil lifeline.