Blue Ammonia Plant Breaks Ground in Louisiana With 98% CO2 Goal

A record-size bet on blue ammonia

Construction has begun on Blue Point One, a low-carbon ammonia plant in Louisiana's Ascension Parish. Its backers say it will be the largest ammonia plant in the world when it is finished. CF Industries, Japan's JERA and Mitsui & Co. broke ground on August 26 in Modeste, a small riverside community upriver from Donaldsonville. The ammonia plant is meant to supply both conventional fertilizer customers and newer energy uses.114 It is designed to produce about 1.4 million metric tons a year, and output is scheduled to start in 2029.17

The three partners are putting up $3.7 billion in proportion to their stakes: CF Industries owns 40%, JERA 35% and Mitsui 25%.714 Other spending at the site adds to that figure. CF Industries is committing another $550 million over four years to shared infrastructure, including storage and loading facilities. Linde plans to spend more than $400 million on an on-site air-separation unit that will supply the plant with oxygen and nitrogen.410 The ceremony also had a political dimension. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, her deputy Stephen Vaden, Army Assistant Secretary Adam Telle and Representative Julia Letlow all attended.714

The groundbreaking came after the State of Louisiana and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued civil construction permits in July.36 One project tracker made a careful distinction: those permits cover the civil work only. They do not show that every authorization for the plant, the CO2 pipeline and the storage site has been granted.10

The technology: autothermal reforming plus capture

The climate case for the plant depends on how it makes hydrogen. Most ammonia today comes from steam methane reforming, which gives off carbon dioxide both from the chemical process and from the fuel burned to heat it. Blue Point One will instead use autothermal reforming (ATR), making it one of the first ammonia plants anywhere to use the method.74 Topsoe is licensing its SynCOR Ammonia process for the project. Technip Energies holds the engineering, procurement and module-fabrication contract for the production facility.10

In practice, ATR's advantage is that the carbon dioxide comes out in a more concentrated stream, which is easier to capture. That explains why the developers can promise much higher capture rates than older blue-ammonia retrofits. The plant will dehydrate and compress the captured CO2 on site and hand it off for transport and permanent geologic storage.36 An Enbridge pipeline of about 50 miles will carry roughly 2.3 million metric tons of CO2 a year to the Pelican Sequestration Hub in Livingston Parish. 1PointFive, the Occidental unit that partners with Enbridge on storage, will manage the injection site under a 25-year agreement.1020

The Linde air-separation unit is part of the same design. ATR needs a steady supply of pure oxygen, and ammonia synthesis needs nitrogen. Building the gas supply on site turns what could have been a supply-chain weak point into a dedicated, co-located utility.19

The capture number keeps changing

The headline capture figure depends on which document you read. The groundbreaking release and most trade coverage say the plant will capture and permanently store 98% of the CO2 produced in manufacturing.19 CF Industries' own project page and earlier permitting coverage use a looser target of "greater than 95%."23

The gap is not a contradiction. It looks like a design target that firmed up over time. Even so, it shows that these are engineering estimates, not measured results. One industry tracker said plainly that the 98% figure is a company projection that has not been independently verified. It also noted that the figure covers only CO2 from the ammonia process, not the full lifecycle of producing, shipping and using the product.10

That lifecycle point carries most of the weight in critics' arguments. Floodlight, reporting through the Louisiana Illuminator, found no evidence that any existing carbon capture project has come close to the cuts companies like CF are promising. It also noted that the capture equipment usually runs on natural gas, and that methane leaks during drilling, processing and transport erode the climate benefit.18 The same reporting found that no commercial-scale blue ammonia plant is yet operating, even though more than 20 have been proposed nationwide.18 If Blue Point One reaches its target, it will be a real engineering achievement. Until 2029, it remains a promise backed by an unusually large investment.

The fertilizer case is real, but most of the payoff comes later

The timing of the groundbreaking helps explain the attention it got in Washington. Nitrogen markets have been hit hard this year. After hostilities with Iran began on February 28, Illinois anhydrous ammonia rose from a pre-conflict average of about $828 a ton to more than $1,120 by mid-April. Prices eased over the summer to about $915 in early August.26 Then they climbed again: USDA's Illinois report in early October showed an average of $945 a ton.24 Analysts expect anhydrous to stay well above $1,000 a ton as farmers price inputs for the 2027 crop.

The Atlantic Council's analysis describes the structural problem. The United States imports about 14% of its anhydrous ammonia. It brings in more than half of its urea and urea ammonium nitrate, much of it from Persian Gulf suppliers.27 The closure of the Strait of Hormuz removed about 36% of the world's traded urea from the market.27 Corn growers have said that domestic production cannot cover demand and that imports remain essential.29

Against that background, a 1.4-million-ton plant matters. CF chief executive Chris Bohn presented it as expanding reliable domestic nitrogen supply for American farmers.14 Louisiana's economic development secretary linked it directly to national security.14 One market analysis expects the extra supply to put moderate downward pressure on U.S. ammonia prices over the long run, but says the effect will mostly show up after 2029.9

Here is the reading this outlet takes: Blue Point One is mainly an export and energy-transition project that will also help fertilizer supply, not the other way around. JERA describes the product as blue ammonia with possible uses in Japanese power generation and industry, and Mitsui plans to sell its share into Asia and Europe.10 Those two partners own 60% of the venture. Some of the plant's output is expected to go to Japan, with the rest feeding CF's North American network.3 JERA's financing points the same way: the Japan Bank for International Cooperation is leading a billion-dollar loan supporting its stake.5

American farmers still benefit, through CF's share of the output and through the shared infrastructure designed for later fertilizer upgrades.7 But the plant will do nothing about this year's price spike or next year's. The Atlantic Council itself says the largest new U.S. plants will not run before 2028. In the near term it urges faster permitting and lower transport costs instead.27

Numbers that don't line up

Coverage of the project has not agreed on several basic figures. In March, Governor Jeff Landry described it as a $4 billion facility, and permit-stage reports used the same number. The partners have since settled on $3.7 billion for the joint venture itself.2061 The difference probably comes from whether the common infrastructure is counted.

Job estimates have also grown. Early coverage cited 1,500 construction jobs; the current figure is about 3,900 over four years.201 CF says the plant will employ about 103 permanent workers at an average salary near $110,000.15 Those are modest permanent numbers for a project this size, and they help explain why some public-finance watchdogs have called the incentives behind Louisiana's blue ammonia buildout excessive.18

Two more caveats apply. The 2.3-million-ton figure CF publishes for captured CO2 depends on the Pelican pipeline, which one tracker describes as still in early development with a 2029 in-service target. That is the same year the plant is due to start.10 In October 2025, Landry also put a moratorium on new carbon-injection permits. Applications already in progress, including the blue ammonia projects, were allowed to continue.18 Blue Point One escaped that freeze, but it shows how fragile the political support for underground CO2 storage is in Louisiana.

The local cost

The plant is going up beside CF's Donaldsonville complex, already the world's largest ammonia facility. According to EPA records cited by local reporters, that complex releases more point-source air pollution than any other industrial plant in the country.17 Modeste is a historic, predominantly Black community. Residents there have said they fear more pollution and displacement.18 Permit records reviewed by Floodlight show that Louisiana's proposed blue ammonia plants together could be allowed to emit more than 2,800 tons of non-greenhouse air pollutants a year.18 More projects are coming. A larger Clean Hydrogen Works facility nearby is still in hearings, and some residents are pushing back.19

Blue Point One deserves serious attention as an engineering project. It is one of the first ATR ammonia plants, it targets near-total process capture, and it is built to industrial scale. Whether it marks a clean-energy breakthrough will depend on what its meters show after 2029, not on the projections made at the groundbreaking.