Bakken Energy has reached an agreement with Basin Electric to purchase the assets of the Dakota Gasification Company, the owner of the Great Plains Synfuels Plant (Synfuels Plant).

Located near Beulah, North Dakota, the Synfuels Plant will be transformed into the largest clean hydrogen production facility in the U.S. In June 2021, Bakken and Mitsubishi Power Americas entered into a strategic partnership to create a clean hydrogen hub in North Dakota to produce, store, transport, and locally capture and sequester CO₂. The Synfuels Plant facility will form the nucleus of a clean energy hub designed to aggressively advance regional, national, and global decarbonization objectives through the development of clean hydrogen applications for the agriculture, power, and transportation sectors.

New, world-class clean hydrogen production facilities generally require up to 10 years to begin producing hydrogen and develop regional infrastructure and applications. The redevelopment of the Synfuels Plant will cut this time in half and produce an estimated 310,000 metric tons of clean hydrogen per year. This production will use locally sourced feedstock and employ established production and carbon capture processes to produce the clean hydrogen.

The project will use advanced ATR (autothermal reforming) hydrogen production technology and capture 95% of the carbon emissions. ATR technology was selected over steam methane reformation (SMR) and other technologies to maximize CO₂ capture rates and repurposing of existing Synfuels Plant infrastructure and processes.

The North Dakota Hydrogen Hub is expected to be commercially operational in late 2026 with a redevelopment budget for the broader hub including carbon capture and sequestration and hydrogen storage exceeding $2B.