NeuVentus: Alternative Storage

Sam Porter, CEO, NeuVentus, speaks exclusively to Tank Storage Magazine about the company’s salt caverns storing hydrogen and natural gas in Texas In 2021, as the US Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and began debating Build Back Better (which ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act), it was clear that, if all of the various policies and incentives for low-carbon hydrogen actually took root, Texas would be ‘in the catbird seat’. With green production, blue production, existing demand, infrastructure and regulatory schemes, a skilled workforce, and a conducive subsurface geology with salt domes, there was nowhere else that Sam Porter, co-founder and CEO of NeuVentus, could imagine being. ‘Originally, it was the hydrogen policies that convinced us to quit jobs, raise capital, obtain the salt real estate and commence the permitting process,’ he explains. ‘While hydrogen policy has remained in limbo over the past 24 months, demand for natural gas and natural gas storage have been resurgent during the same period. Thankfully, we intentionally pursued a permitting strategy that allows us to store not only hydrogen, but also hydrocarbon liquids...