Ships and aircraft are starting to need clean fuel made from wind and sun. We expect the coastal and offshore hubs that make and deliver it to become valuable energy assets (our view, not a certainty). We checked, hard, where that works today and where it doesn't yet. This page shows what we found and the three moves in our plan: two we are making now and one we are watching for, so that if the Gulf opens up, or a good project appears elsewhere, we are already in position. Today owning a fuel plant does not pay yet (see Door 3 on the main page).
It works today where there is cheap power or a subsidy, and a big buyer signs a long contract: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Denmark. It doesn't work yet in the US Gulf: no offshore wind can be built there, the hydrogen tax credit is ending, and on an old platform the power alone would cost more than the fuel sells for. So we earn from what is being built now, hold one cheap option on a powered coastal site, and move big when the triggers hit.
The big hubs are real, but in 2026 they only get built with cheap power or public support, and a buyer on a long contract (often government-backed). Most other projects are being canceled or delayed.
| What | Status in 2026 | What it tells us |
|---|---|---|
| NEOM, Saudi Arabia | 2.2 GW of electrolyzers, up to about 1.2 million tonnes of green ammonia a year; start-up began in August 2026, with first product expected in 2027; Yara will market and ship the output | Giant hubs get built where sun and wind are cheap and a strategic buyer is lined up |
| H2Global (Germany's government-backed fuel-buying program) | Agreed to buy green ammonia from Egypt at €1,000 a tonne delivered to Europe, 2027–2033 | Government-backed buyers set the price that makes projects bankable |
| Kassø, Denmark | Commercial e-methanol since 2025, sold to Maersk, LEGO and Novo Nordisk; expansion won a €228M German hydrogen award | Ship and brand buyers will pay a premium when contracts are long |
| Floating ammonia plants (e.g. SwitcH2, Portugal) | 300 MW design; no floating unit had announced a final go-ahead as of mid-September 2026 | Offshore production is coming, but it is not proven at scale |
| The global pipeline | IEA: the 2030 pipeline has shrunk to 27 million tonnes, and only about 6 million tonnes of it is committed or likely; many large projects were canceled in 2025–26 (for example, Air Products' Louisiana complex) | Most announced hubs will not be built. Picking the right partner matters more than having the idea |
| The US Gulf | No offshore wind areas since July 2025, and the only Gulf wind lease was canceled in August 2026; the 45V hydrogen credit ends for projects starting after 2027; at today's costs an ammonia plant on an old platform would cost about $3,000 a tonne to make fuel that sells for about $1,050 (see the calculator) | The Gulf is not ready yet. Our estimate: a Gulf project could reach a go-ahead in 2030–2032 at the earliest, and only if policy, power costs and a long-term buyer all line up. Offshore wind there is further off still |
What decides it (our estimate): a hub needs power at roughly $30 per MWh or less, available 70% of the time or more, plus a buyer on a 10–15 year contract. Ship fuel rules help: Europe's FuelEU rules fine ships €2,400 for each tonne of fuel-oil-equivalent energy by which they miss the target, and more for repeat years; the UN shipping agency (IMO) resumes talks on a global rule in late November 2026, and a vote is possible in early December.
High-pressure pumps for geothermal power, oilfield water disposal and CO₂ storage: markets that are funded and growing today. Earns while we wait. We also sell pump packages into the ammonia and LNG plants being built on the Gulf Coast now (Door 2 on the main page). Details ↓
Secure land near the new high-voltage lines on the Texas coast, the kind of site a future fuel hub, or a data center, needs. Small, staged spending; bring in a partner before the big deposits. Details ↓
Watch-only today. Join a real fuel-hub project as partner, equipment supplier for equity, or co-developer, when the triggers below line up. Details ↓
Our family has built high-pressure drilling pumps for many years. The same machines, with a new "wet end" (the part that touches the fluid), can serve three markets that are growing right now: geothermal, oilfield water disposal and CO₂ storage. Each market below is sized from public data; where we had to make an assumption, we say so.
| Market | Now (2025–2026) | Coming | Why a high-pressure pump maker cares |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drilling rigs (our home market) | 595 US rigs working on 18 Sep 2026 (581 of 591 were on land a week earlier) | Flat to modest growth our estimate | Every rig runs 2–3 mud pumps. The base business: pumps, parts, service. |
| Next-generation geothermal | Fervo Cape Station: ~100 MW Phase I, first power Q4 2026; 400 MW Phase II due 2028 with two drilling rigs working. US geothermal wells drilled in 2022: 25. | DOE's best-case pathway: 2–5 GW by 2030 (1,300–3,300 wells). Named projects add up to about 0.5–1 GW our estimate | Hot, hard-rock drilling needs high-temperature mud pumps, and geothermal plants need injection pumps at 1,000–2,300 psi. |
| Oilfield water disposal (Permian) | About 22 million barrels of produced water a day forecast for 2025, roughly 16 million of it going to disposal wells. About 36,000 US disposal wells. | About 26 million barrels a day by 2030 | Texas's June 2025 guidelines can limit new disposal wells in higher-pressure zones to 10,000 barrels a day and lower allowed pressures. Smaller, higher-pressure wells are where plunger pumps fit best (our reading). |
| CO₂ storage | 5 projects able to inject 5.2 million tonnes a year; 106 permit applications covering 387 wells. Texas got permitting authority in Nov 2025. | Forecasts reach ~300 million tonnes a year by 2030, but permits are slow we use far less | Smaller CO₂ sources (ethanol plants, oil recovery) often suit high-pressure plunger pumps (our estimate: 30–60% of them). The 2025 tax law raised the federal 45Q carbon-storage credit for CO₂ used in oil recovery from $60 to $85 a tonne (details on which projects qualify still to confirm). |
| Product | What it does | Built from | Starts | Market we can reach, 2030 (our estimate, base case) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geothermal drilling pump package | High-temperature kit and parts for drilling hot geothermal wells | Our existing large drilling pumps, at their current ratings | 2027 | ~$5M/yr |
| Water-disposal plunger kit | Converts a drilling pump into a 24/7 disposal-well injection pump (about 10,000 barrels a day at 3,000 psi) | Our existing pump frames | Design 2027 or early 2028, field trial 2028–29 | ~$6M/yr |
| Continuous injection pump | 24/7 injection for geothermal plants and high-pressure waterflood | Our existing pump frames, with a new plunger module | Go / no-go mid-2027, only with at least half the development cost funded by a partner or grant | ~$46M/yr least certain |
| CO₂ injection pump | Dense-phase CO₂ into storage and oil-recovery wells, about 0.2–0.4 million tonnes a year per pump | Same frames as the injection pump | Development ~2030–31, after 8,000 field hours on the injection pump; first sales after 2031 in our base case | ~$18M/yr |
"Market we can reach" is the slice of each US market a small American maker could realistically sell into. It is our own arithmetic on the public numbers above, with stated assumptions (how many rigs go geothermal, what share of wells use plunger pumps, how many pumps per well). Most of the $46M injection-pump figure depends on geothermal developers choosing plunger pumps over centrifugal ones, which nobody knows yet.
This model covers only the new product line: prices, costs, development spending, three new hires and a contract engineer, working capital. It does not include the existing pump business. Numbers are before tax.
| Conservative | Base | Upside | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue in FY2031 | $1.1M | $4.3M | $12.4M |
| Covers its running costs (before loan interest, tax and equipment wear) | not by 2031 | FY2030 | FY2029 |
| Cash flow turns positive | not by 2031 | FY2031 | FY2030 |
| Most cash we would have to put in | $5.1M and rising | $3.4M | $1.4M |
| Most cash out in a single year | $1.8M (2027) | $1.4M (2027) | $1.1M (2027) |
What this means, plainly. The new pump line is a modest business, not a jackpot, and these are our estimates. In the base case it needs about $3.4M of our money, covers its running costs from 2030, and at base-case sales would not pay that money back until well after 2035. The conservative case never breaks even in the window, so we build in a checkpoint at the end of 2028: if the water-disposal trial and geothermal sales look like this case, we cut back to the geothermal kits and parts. By then we would have put in about $2.9M; cutting back is meant to keep further losses small (our estimate; not modeled in detail). The upside case pays back by 2030.
How we keep it inside our means. One major design program at a time. Equipment-finance the test loop. If money is tight, start the water-disposal design in early 2028 rather than 2027. The big injection pump goes ahead only if a partner or grant funds at least half of its development. The CO₂ pump waits until the injection pump has proven itself in the field. The charts above show the plan before these savings: they assume the water-disposal design starts in 2027 and the test loop is paid for in cash.
Plans, dates and figures on this page are our current estimates and intentions. They will change, and nothing here is an offer to sell or a request to invest.
Every fuel hub of the future needs the same things first: coastal land, a big grid connection, water and a port. Those sites are being claimed now, mostly by data-center builders. We want one, secured cheaply and early with land options, near where the new high-voltage lines are going.
At least eight large data-center projects have been announced or proposed on or near the Texas coast. One, at Matagorda, was bought from an e-fuels developer and is expected to get up to 2 GW of grid power by 2028, though the grid operator has not yet confirmed how much. Fuel makers are losing these sites to data centers, which pay more today.
The grid operator's statewide 765 kV plan includes new extra-high-voltage lines toward Houston and the coast, with new substations likely around 2030 or later. Routes are not final and some landowners oppose them. In our view, land near the eventual substations is cheap today and could be worth much more once the lines are built.
Under a rule Texas adopted in September 2026 (it takes effect on October 8, 2026), anyone asking for 75 MW or more must post $50,000 per MW before the grid will even study the site, plus a $100,000 study fee. For 400 MW that is $20M up front. Approvals for new large data centers are also on hold while the state audits the queue, and the audit is slowing everyone else's requests too.
| Stage | What we do | Rough cost our estimate | Go / no-go |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Screen | Pick the best area near the planned lines, with water and port access; talk to the utility | ~$0.3M | A willing landowner and a plausible grid path |
| 2 · Control the land | Options on the land, surveys, environmental checks, engineering, the study request | ~$0.8–1.9M | Land secured and a clean site |
| 3 · Partner before the deposit | Bring in a partner that posts the $50k-per-MW security, or sell the site package to one | Partner's money, not ours | We never post the big security ourselves |
| 4 · Keep a stake | Hold a share of the site as it moves toward a fuel hub, a data center or both | Small | Sell or hold, by the numbers |
Plainly: this is an option, not a sure thing. Most early-stage sites never get power, and we are starting behind some very large companies. Sites with power agreements have recently sold for about $60,000–250,000 per MW, and energized ones for much more; bare land options sell for little. The plan keeps our cash at risk small until a partner is in, and the upside is a share of a site that could be worth tens of millions if it gets its connection (our estimate). On our numbers, most tries lose their small stake and a few pay well, so on average it is roughly break-even. That is why we keep the stake small.
Together, Moves 1 and 2 need about $4.5–5.6M of our own money over several years in the base case (our estimate). We stage it so Move 2 spends little until Move 1's money is set aside.
Plans, dates and figures on this page are our current estimates and intentions. They will change, and nothing here is an offer to sell or a request to invest.
Today this move is watch-only. We would commit real money to a fuel-hub project, most likely abroad at first, only when enough of these line up. We check them every quarter.
| Trigger | Watching for | When |
|---|---|---|
| Global ship-fuel rule | The IMO adopts its net-zero framework with a real carbon price | Talks resume late Nov 2026, vote possible early Dec; if adopted, in force 2028 at the earliest |
| Gulf offshore wind | Federal wind areas reopened, or Texas state-waters wind moving | Not before ~2029 (our estimate); first power years after that |
| Long-term buyers | New H2Global, Japanese or Korean contract rounds that US-built projects can bid into; shipping lines and airlines signing 10–15 year contracts | Ongoing |
| Power cost | Steady power offered at around $30 per MWh or less at a coastal site | Ongoing |
| First floating plants | A floating ammonia or methanol unit reaches a final go-ahead and runs | 2026–2029 |
Supply high-pressure pumps and packages to a first-wave fuel hub in exchange for a stake, alongside a developer who has the buyer and the financing.
Bring our coastal site, our Houston base and our engineering to a larger developer's project as the local partner.
Join an export project in a place with cheap sun and wind and a government-backed buyer (the Middle East or North Africa, for example) as a US partner, the way a small American developer has teamed up with a large European group on a North African project.
Plans, dates and figures on this page are our current estimates and intentions. They will change, and nothing here is an offer to sell or a request to invest.
No move starts until its money is set aside, without touching what an earlier move still needs. One major pump design at a time.
Any fuel we help make needs a buyer on a long contract before anything is built. No hub on hope.
We don't post grid deposits, take on old platforms' cleanup bills, or build hubs alone. We bring what we're good at and share the rest.
Checked September 2026. Anything not from a source below is labeled as our estimate.