Every clean-fuel plant runs on pumps. We make the pumps.
Wind and seawater can be turned into ship fuel. We checked whether an old Gulf oil platform
should do it. At today's costs it should not: the Gulf plan loses money every year.
The plants being built on the Gulf Coast right now still need pumps, whichever fuel wins.
This whole page is a calculator. Move any number and check our homework.
Wind is free. Seawater is free. The hard part is the money,
and every plan below says exactly how much it needs and what it pays back.
Green means a good deal. Yellow means risky. Red means walk away.
Today every offshore plan is red or yellow. That is why we sell pumps first.
These are estimates from public studies, not promises, not investment advice.
The idea, in one picture
Ships burn dirty fuel today because clean fuel costs too much to make.
The idea: make it at sea, where the wind blows, and sell it where ships already stop.
Every arrow is a step a real plant already does. The only question is whether the money works. That is what the rest of this page checks.
Why offshore?
It sounds right, but in the Gulf it is not. About 1,300 platforms stand in federal Gulf waters and more than 500 were overdue for removal in 2023. But Gulf wind at sea runs only about 30–40% of the time (land wind in the US averages 34%), the government canceled every Gulf offshore wind area in 2025 and the only Gulf wind lease in August 2026. A plant on the shore beats a plant at sea on cost, safety and hurricanes.
Why now?
Ships are starting to switch, slowly. Europe's rules already charge ships for carbon on voyages to Europe. The first ammonia-fueled ocean ship was delivered in June 2026. A global rule is still not adopted: the UN shipping agency (IMO) resumes talks in late November 2026, a vote is possible in early December, and the US opposes it. The switch is real but slow, so we sell into it without betting the family on it.
Why us?
Every one of these plants needs pumps, and so do the geothermal wells, oilfield water-disposal wells and CO₂ storage wells being drilled today. High-pressure pumps are our family's trade.
The money: three ways to play
Three different-sized bets. Each one says how much cash it needs and what it realistically pays back. Door 3 does not work today, and we say so.
DOOR 1 · SAFEST · START HERE
Sell the pumps
~$3.4M of our own money in the base case
Build high-pressure pumps for markets growing now: geothermal drilling, oilfield water disposal and CO₂ storage, on our existing drilling-pump designs
One product at a time, starting with a geothermal drilling package in 2027
Base case: covers its running costs from 2030; the money is not paid back until well after 2035 (our estimate)
Works whichever fuel wins
LOWER RISK · SLOW TO QUALIFY
DOOR 2 · LOW COST · FAST
Sell into big projects
$1–3M working capital + a bonding line
Energy companies are building ammonia and LNG plants on the Gulf Coast. They need equipment
They pay for the plant. We supply the pump packages and earn the margin
Big contracts need performance bonds, held-back payments and warranties, so this still ties up our cash
Also the best market research possible: we learn what buyers actually want
LOW RISK · NEEDS WORKING CAPITAL
DOOR 3 · THE BIG ONE · NOT TODAY
Own a slice of a plant
~$390M for a 100 MW plant on an old Gulf rig, at today's costs
At today's costs the ammonia costs about $3,000 a tonne to make and ship. It sells for about $1,050. The plant loses money every year
No offshore wind can be built in the Gulf today. The 45V hydrogen credit ends for projects that start building after 2027, and new wind and solar farms that start construction after July 4, 2026 only get federal credits if running by the end of 2027
Even if everything goes right (steady power at $35/MWh, machines 60% cheaper, a subsidized buyer at $1,050/t) it earns about 9% a year, a little less than the 10% its money costs
We will look again only if power, machine costs and a signed buyer all change. Until then we sell pumps to whoever builds
NOT VIABLE TODAY · WATCH ONLY
This loop is Door 3 on an old Gulf rig with wind, at today's costs (the calculator's Gulf plan). The power alone costs more than the ammonia sells for. Try "Everything Goes Right" in the calculator to see how much would have to change.
The calculator
Nine ready-made stories below. Click one. Every slider changes the deal:
the verdict, the money needed, and the payback update instantly. At today's real costs, none of them is a good deal.
"Everything Goes Right" shows how much would have to change.
GREEN = earns its cost of money with room to spare · YELLOW = thin, or only with a government credit · RED = walk away · chips are priced live at the site picked in the Location switch (Plant panel)
The Plant
small500 MW
$5M$600M
$5M$300M
$400$3,000/kW
5%16%
1030 yrs
1%8%
$0 (they last forever?)$200M
walk away free$60M
Offshore machines wear out. The stacks get swapped around year 10, the rig has to be cleaned up at the end, and yearly upkeep (4% of the build cost, about $16M/yr on the Gulf plan) rides on top of both. All three are counted in every number on this page. Western hydrogen machines cost about $2,000–2,550 per kW installed on land (IEA, 2025); at sea it is more, not less.
Power Source mix adds to 100%
Wind blows % of the time
Wind power cost $/MWh
Sun shines % of the time
Solar power cost $/MWh
Tides run % of the time
Tidal power cost $/MWh
Runs % of the time
Always-on cost $/MWh
The plant buys its power from someone else's wind farm (or reactor) at the $/MWh price above; the cost of building that wind farm is inside the price, not in "money needed". Today nobody can build offshore wind in the Gulf: the federal government withdrew all offshore wind leasing in 2025, and the only Gulf wind lease was canceled in August 2026. Onshore, Houston-area wholesale grid power averaged about $33/MWh in the second quarter of 2026, but it is not steady renewable power, and from October 8, 2026 anyone connecting 75 MW or more must post $50,000 per MW of security before the grid will study the site (see the plan).
Shared Steps
4660 kWh/kg
The hydrogen is then squeezed into tanks. Squeezing to 700 bar ≈ 3 kWh per kg. Liquefying it ≈ 12 kWh per kg. Set the slider below to match.
015 kWh/kg
sell hydrogen rawall into fuel
Filtering seawater costs almost nothing (0.035 kWh per kg). It is never the problem. Electricity is the problem.
Making Ammonia
0.41.6 MWh/t
Air is free: ammonia grabs nitrogen from the air. That's why it is the only fuel on this page with no carbon problem.
Making Methanol
0.42.0 MWh/t
Methanol needs carbon dioxide (CO₂). Ships already burn methanol today, and it is the easiest fuel to adopt.
Making Diesel & Jet Fuel
1.03.0 MWh/t
This fuel works in today's engines and planes, so it sells at premium prices. But it needs about 3 tonnes of CO₂ per tonne of fuel. Carbon is the whole ballgame here.
Making Clean Natural Gas
0.21.5 MWh/t
This fuel can flow through today's gas pipelines and ships. The catch: it competes with cheap natural gas, so it needs a premium buyer (Japan, Korea).
Where The CO₂ Comes From decides everything for carbon fuels
$50$400/t
0.83.5 MWh/t
$10M$200M
By boat is how real plants run today. Sucking CO₂ from air works but drinks power. From seawater is still lab science. Treat it as research, not business.
Prices
$300$2,000/t
$300$2,000/t
$500$5,000/t
$300$4,000/t
$1$15/kg
sell at the platform$150/t
$0$3/kg H2
vent it (default)$0.60/kg H₂
Every kg of hydrogen comes with 8 kg of pure oxygen. Most plans vent it. If a buyer exists (fish farms and steel mills both buy oxygen), bulk oxygen sells for about $100 a tonne, so the most it could add is about $0.40–0.80 per kg of H₂, and close to nothing offshore with no pipeline. There are no rare-earth byproducts: seawater has none, and electrolysis extracts nothing from it. (Fritz Haber spent the 1920s trying to pay Germany's war debts with gold from seawater, and gave up when he found far less than he hoped.)
$20$300/MWh
$0$1/kg
What the fuel sells for
Cost per kg of hydrogen, made & shipped
Ammonia cost
levelized, $/t NH₃
Hydrogen made per day
Ammonia output
tonnes / day
Total money needed
Yearly profit (after running costs)
Payback
years until the cash in covers the build
Return rate (IRR)
per year over the project life, before tax
Value today (NPV)
Blended power
how often it runs · power cost
Yearly sales
Yearly costs
The three prices, side by side
SELL PRICE
COST TO MAKE
STORE & PRESSURE
LOAD & SHIP
PROFIT PER UNIT
HYDROGEN (raw gas)
at platform
AMMONIA (fuel)
Store, pressure AND load-and-ship are already counted inside “cost to make”. Each gets its own column because buyers, banks, and engineers ask for them separately.
Which site wins, fuel by fuel, at your settings
Same plant and sliders, only the site changes. The computer quietly runs all 20 fuel-and-site combinations and shows each fuel's winner. The highlighted row is the fuel you're viewing.
Where each kilogram's cost goes
Electricity is almost always the biggest slice. That is why the power source sliders matter more than everything else combined.
The price ruler: cost per kilogram (cheaper is better)
Regular ship fuel (VLSFO, about $740–770/t in Houston, Sept 2026) costs about $2.20 per kg of hydrogen-equivalent energy. Green ammonia at $1,050/t costs a ship about 3× that for the same energy; only Europe's fuel rules close that gap today, and only on voyages to Europe.
How many big ships does this feed?
What if things change?
The dial that hurts most is almost always power: its cost and how often it blows.
The physical footprint
How the plant works: follow the pipes
Seawater in one end, ship fuel out the other. Every number on this diagram is live.
It changes when you move the calculator sliders above.
Filtering water is almost free. Splitting water is the whole business. Carbon is a delivery problem. Steady power is everything.
Where the ships fill up
Ships don't stop in the middle of the ocean. They fill up at a few big ports, then run.
A fuel plant only makes money sitting next to one of these. The calculator's Location switch
prices five of these sites. Each note under it says what that site gives you and what it costs you.
Port
Fuel sold in 2025
Why it matters to us
Singapore
56.8 Mt
The biggest ship-fuel port on Earth. Ammonia bunkering trials approved May 2026; the first 5,000 m³ ammonia bunker vessel is due September 2027.
Rotterdam / Antwerp
9.8 + 7.9 Mt
Europe's rules have teeth: carbon allowances on 100% of emissions from 2026, and FuelEU fines. Rotterdam ran a ship-to-ship ammonia pilot in April 2025. Clean fuel sells here first.
Zhoushan, China
8.0 Mt
Now the world's No. 3 fuel port, and China's state-backed clean-fuel hub.
Fujairah, UAE
~7.4M m³
The price marker for the East.
Busan / Ulsan, Korea
multi-Mt hub
Ulsan did the world's first commercial ammonia bunkering in April 2026. Ammonia ships and clean-gas buyers.
Houston / US Gulf
US Gulf hub
Home. The first US ship-to-ship methanol bunkering happened here in March 2026, and the Galveston LNG Bunker Port in Texas City is planned to open in 2028. No ammonia bunkering yet. Where we work, and where the plants that need our pumps are being built.
Panama / Gibraltar
5.3 / ~4.5 Mt
Chokepoint stops: ships pay extra when routes are stressed. (Gibraltar is an industry estimate.)
The ocean cluster: neighbors who pay each other
One mooring can hold more than one business. The fuel plant is the anchor;
a fish farm and a data center make it stronger: the fish breathe our oxygen, the data center warms their water,
and everyone shares one fiber line, one crew boat, and one permit.
1 · Your fuel plant
The anchor tenant. Wind and seawater become ship fuel, the business the rest of this page is about. Everything else plugs into its platform, crew, and cable.
2 · The fish farm
Buys your oxygen. Every kg of hydrogen makes 8 kg of pure O₂, and fish farms inject it so packed pens don't suffocate. Warm water from the data center grows the fish faster, year-round. Two costs become two incomes.
3 · The data center
Buys spare power. It runs training jobs when the wind blows and pauses in the lulls, the one kind of computing that fits a wind platform. Its cooling water leaves warm; the fish farm pipes it straight into the pens. On land, powered sites on the Texas coast are being claimed now, mostly by data-center builders, which is why we want one of those sites (Move 2).
Honest fine print: the data center only works with firm power or flexible AI jobs, because 24/7 uptime on wind alone doesn't pencil. Microsoft's undersea data center (Natick) worked, but Microsoft shut it in 2024 because it was impractical to build and service at scale. Oxygen is worth about $100 a tonne at best, so it is a side income, not a business, and close to nothing offshore with no pipeline. And none of this works mid-ocean: the cluster lives next to a real port. Same map rule as always.
THE MAP RULE: if a ship wouldn't already pass within a few hours of the platform, the platform isn't a gas station. It's a very expensive view.
Proof this is real
None of this is science fiction, but most of it is still small, and none of it is in the Gulf. The biggest real one, NEOM in Saudi Arabia (2.2 GW, on land), began start-up in August 2026, with first product expected in 2027.
North Sea, July 2026
PosHYdon, a 1.25 MW pilot on a working gas platform off the Netherlands, made its first green hydrogen from desalinated seawater. Small amounts, not yet sold, and about 7 years in the making. Our Gulf plan would be 80 times bigger.
A giant fuel ship, being designed
SwitcH2 is designing a 268-meter floating plant off Portugal with 300 MW of hydrogen machines and an ammonia plant on deck: about 243,000–300,000 tonnes a year. No final go-ahead had been announced as of mid-September 2026; first ammonia was targeted for 2029. It takes power from the shore grid, not wind alone.
Clean methanol, running since 2025
Kassø in Denmark has made clean methanol at commercial scale (42,000 t a year) since March 2025, from electricity and captured carbon. It works on land; our calculator shows why the sea version is harder.
We also show the failures, honestly: in 2025 the Netherlands paused its offshore hydrogen demo until 2030, because the hydrogen market grew slower than expected. Aberdeen's hydrogen buses, bought for about £556k each, sat parked when repairs to the fuel stations were delayed, and are being sold for £30k each. Closer to home, Air Products canceled its Louisiana hydrogen and ammonia complex in 2026. That is what happens when a plan ignores the money. This page never ignores the money.
The plan: start small, dream big
1
Start small: sell pumps
Build high-pressure pumps for geothermal drilling, oilfield water disposal and CO₂ storage on our existing drilling-pump designs, one product at a time. Get paid while we learn.
~$3.4M OF OUR OWN MONEY (BASE CASE) · LOWER RISK
2
Sell into someone else's plant
Energy companies are spending billions on ammonia and LNG plants on the Gulf Coast. They need equipment. They pay for the plant; we supply the packages, earn the margin, and learn exactly what buyers want.
$1–3M WORKING CAPITAL + BONDING · 12–36 MONTHS · LOW RISK
3
Own a slice of a plant: not today
An offshore fuel plant on an old Gulf rig loses money at today's costs. We watch for the triggers in the full plan and would join a partner's project only when they line up; the likelier first place is abroad, not the Gulf. Meanwhile we may take a small, staged option on one powered coastal site.