A startup environmental technology company has sued Exxon Mobil for allegedly blocking access to a carbon dioxide pipeline network in Louisiana that the company needed to produce blue ammonia, which is used to make hydrogen fuel.
Clean Hydrogen Works claimed in a new antitrust lawsuit that Exxon and its affiliate, Denbury, had violated contractual agreements for its planned blue ammonia project in central Louisiana. The company had sought to produce blue ammonia at the facility, but is now asking a Texas state court to require Exxon and Denbury to pay damages for preventing the project from going forward.
“Defendants’ willful, deceptive, and anticompetitive actions have forced Plaintiffs to seek a replacement CO2 transportation and storage solution,” attorneys for Clean Hydrogen Works said in their second amended petition to a business court in Harris County, Texas.
“Because Denbury’s pipeline is the only developed and operational one in the region,” they continued, “any replacement will cause crippling delays and be orders of magnitude (likely more than $1 billion) more expensive than what Denbury had agreed to charge Plaintiffs for transportation and storage services.”
