Air Products NEOM Green Hydrogen and Louisiana Blue Ammonia: What the White Contract Reveals

I've spent close to eight years negotiating industrial gas and hydrogen supply agreements. In my first year, around 2017, I made the classic rookie mistake: I trusted a one-page term sheet because it said 'renewable hydrogen.' It cost about $4,200 in extra filtration and a week of delays. That mistake taught me to ask for something most buyers skip—the long-form agreement, what I now call the white contract.

The same lesson shows up at a much bigger scale when people search for 'Air Products NEOM green hydrogen' and 'Air Products blue ammonia Louisiana.' The searches make these sound like two competing futures: one green, one blue. I don't look at them that way anymore.

The Problem I Keep Seeing: People Buy the Label, Not the System

A buyer sees the words 'green hydrogen' and assumes it means zero-carbon, 24/7, endlessly. A seller may also believe it. Neither sees the system underneath: where the electricity comes from, how often the electrolyzer runs, what happens to the oxygen, whether the desalination plant uses too much energy, how the ammonia is transported, and who gets blamed if the renewable certificate is double counted.

This is not a niche accounting issue. I've watched a credit committee reject a 10-year offtake because the contract didn't say who owned the carbon attribute from the hydrogen production process. The seller said it was obvious. The committee said it was missing. The deal didn't die because hydrogen was the wrong choice. It died because the label was not supported by the legal structure.

Air Products NEOM Green Hydrogen and Blue Ammonia Louisiana Are Not Opposites

If you line up these two Air Products examples side by side, they look different. In Saudi Arabia, Air Products is part of a consortium building a green ammonia project at NEOM, designed to use renewable power to split water into hydrogen and then convert that hydrogen into ammonia for global export. In Louisiana, Air Products is developing blue ammonia from natural gas, with carbon capture and permanent storage tied to the company's existing Gulf Coast hydrogen pipeline network.

One begins with sun and wind. The other begins with natural gas and geology. But both are attempts to solve the same problem: produce hydrogen without releasing the corresponding CO2 in the process. The difference is not the hydrogen. The difference is the system and, more importantly, the contract that describes the system.

What Is the Crust Made Of?

At a project review in late 2022, a veteran colleague asked a question that stopped the room: 'What is the crust made of?' I thought he was joking. He wasn't. The top layer of a hydrogen project is the press release. The crust is everything that supports it: water rights, natural gas feedstock, pipelines, power purchase agreements, salt cavern storage or sequestration wells, rail loading, ammonia ships, and the 15-year offtake agreement that pays for all of it.

What is the crust made of in NEOM? Not just solar panels. The crust includes an enormous renewable power build-out, electrolyzers, ammonia production and storage, and the commercial arrangement that tracks the clean energy from generation to final product. It also includes a system for dealing with intermittency: what happens at night, during dust storms, or when power prices spike. If that system is weak, 'green' becomes a claim with no foundation.

What is the crust made of in the Air Products blue ammonia Louisiana project? Not just natural gas. The crust includes the CO2 capture rate, the sequestration geology, and the monitoring plan for that CO2. It includes the methane intensity of the upstream gas supply. If any of those is not credible, calling the ammonia 'blue' is mostly a color choice, not a climate result.

This is where I get annoying. I ask to see the white contract.

The White Contract Has No Color

The white contract is my name for the version of the agreement before marketing language arrives. In a white contract, words like 'green' 'blue' and 'clean' almost never appear. The useful words are: firm capacity, delivered carbon intensity, measurement standard, make-up gas, performance guarantee, liability cap, and data verification.

Here is the test I use:

• If a supplier cannot define 'green hydrogen' in the white contract, the color is not a specification. It's an aspiration.
• If the contract doesn't say which carbon accounting standard applies, the emission reduction is not verifiable.
• If the seller keeps the carbon attribute but the buyer wants to claim a green product, the asset has two owners and zero credibility.
• If the contract measures carbon intensity at the plant gate but ignores transport and storage emissions, the buyer may get a different climate result than the brochure promised.

This is not legal pedantry. Federal Trade Commission guidance in the US points the same direction: environmental claims need substantiation (ftc.gov/green-guides). The FTC Green Guides are often discussed in consumer marketing, but the principle transfers to B2B. If you say a product is green, someone should be able to follow the logic from the process to the certificate to the contract.

The Peanut Butter Lesson

Let me make it concrete with something almost boring: peanut butter.

In 2019, I visited a food processing plant that fills jars of peanut butter. Before capping, the machine injected nitrogen into the headspace. That nitrogen pushes out oxygen, delays oxidation, and keeps the peanut oil from going rancid. Nothing on the jar says 'nitrogen blanketed.' The customer just gets peanut butter that tastes fresh longer.

Hydrogen is even more invisible. You cannot look at a molecule and tell whether it was made from renewable electricity, natural gas with capture, or something less responsible. The process cannot be tasted, smelled, or seen. It can only be documented.

That's why I apply the peanut butter test to clean hydrogen: if you cannot explain the process that makes it green in one plain paragraph, you shouldn't sign the contract. 'Green' is a process word, not a product word.

What It Costs When You Skip This

The cost of skipping the system and signing the label is not always obvious on day one. In my first year, the price showed up as a $4,200 purchase order and a delayed production schedule. In larger deals, it shows up when the annual sustainability report is challenged, when a lender asks for verification, or when customers start requesting the emissions calculation by hour rather than by year.

A messy but honest system can be fixed. A clean-looking system with no white contract support cannot. I've seen small clean hydrogen projects stall because the developer didn't secure a renewable energy supply contract that matched the project's operating profile. I've seen larger projects get delayed because the CO2 transport and sequestration agreement was described in an email, not in the project contracts.

Air Products' projects at NEOM and Louisiana are not flawless because they are large. They are instructive because they are integrated. That doesn't mean you need to build a $4 billion project to learn from it. It just means you should not choose a hydrogen supplier based on the color, any more than you would choose a gas supplier because the logo looks clean.

A Short Checklist Before You Trust Any Clean Molecule

Here's what I now ask myself when a document calls something green, blue, or low carbon:

1. What is the crust made of? List the feedstock, energy source, water, site, transport route, and storage.
2. Where is it in the white contract? Find the performance definitions and use them to fill in the color label.
3. How would you prove it to a regulator or a CFO? If the answer is 'we'll work out the details later,' the details will arrive too late.

I'll also say what I don't recommend: every industrial gas buyer should not run out and sign a long-term offtake from a mega ammonia project. If you need a small amount of hydrogen or nitrogen, your decision is about logistics, purity, and reliable supply—not about East Coast ammonia ports. The giant projects are useful as a reference for what transparency looks like, not as a template for everyone.

The bottom line: hydrogen projects are built on systems, and systems are built on contracts. Ask for the white contract. Ask what is the crust made of. If the seller gives you a blank stare, that pause is exactly when you know the color might be lighter than the reality.