MoonRock’s Duqm Study Extends Oman’s Shore Power Pipeline Beyond Sohar
Asyad Group’s Duqm shore power assessment should be read less as a technology announcement and more as a market-formation signal. Oman is beginning to test where OPS can produce repeatable commercial value across ports, terminals and shipyard operations.
MoonRock is the important name in the announcement. In 2025, SOHAR Port and Freezone signed a development agreement with Moonrock R&D and Denmark’s PowerCon to establish shore power infrastructure at Sohar’s container terminal. In that project, Moonrock was reported as the lead investor and PowerCon as the technical partner. Duqm therefore looks like a possible second step in building an Oman-based OPS development pipeline rather than a one-off study.
That matters because Oman’s port structure gives Asyad a useful testing ground. Sohar is a major industrial port and freezone, jointly linked to Asyad and the Port of Rotterdam ecosystem. Duqm is different: a strategic industrial zone with a deepwater port, drydock, energy projects, green hydrogen positioning and large public and private infrastructure commitments. If MoonRock can make shore power bankable across both settings, Oman would have the beginnings of a domestic OPS investment model rather than isolated port-level pilots.
The economic question at Duqm is not whether shore power reduces emissions alongside. The sharper question is whether a drydock can create enough predictable demand to justify electrical infrastructure, connection equipment, grid reinforcement and operating procedures. Ship repair and conversion work can produce longer alongside periods than ordinary cargo calls, but the load profile is different, vessel readiness is less uniform, and yard operations may compete with other industrial power demands.
Asyad Drydock gives the study a serious operational base. Public yard profiles describe a 2,800-metre quay, water depths of around 9-10 metres, 14 jib cranes and two graving docks capable of handling very large vessels. The yard has also reported its 2,200th drydocking milestone and more than 10% growth in drydockings in the first five months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025. That operating density is relevant. OPS economics improve when connection events can be standardised and repeated, not when equipment is installed for occasional symbolic use.
The Special Economic Zone at Duqm reported cumulative investment of RO 6 billion by June 2024, while earlier special-zone material put government infrastructure spending at more than OMR 2.5 billion. AIIB has also supported the Duqm Port Commercial Terminal and Operational Zone Development Project with a USD 265 million loan, and Investcorp announced a USD 550 million port infrastructure cooperation agreement in 2025. OPS at Duqm would sit inside a much larger capital formation story.
That scale cuts both ways. On one hand, Duqm’s industrial expansion, drydock activity and hydrogen narrative can help shore power compete for attention. On the other, OPS will have to earn its place among bigger-ticket infrastructure priorities: logistics capacity, industrial land development, green metals, hydrogen, fuel supply, ship repair growth and power-system expansion. The test is whether shore power is treated as an operating asset with a revenue and utilisation model, not as environmental furnishing around the quay.
The player map is therefore central. Asyad controls the logistics logic. Asyad Drydock provides the asset and demand environment. MoonRock appears to be positioning itself as an Omani shore power investor/developer. PowerCon is relevant because of its Sohar technical-partner role, although no equivalent technical partner has been publicly named for Duqm in the available reports. OQ Alternative Energy is relevant to the wider Duqm decarbonisation package through the hydrogen offtake term sheet, not directly to the OPS study. Zelos Technology sits in the parallel automation lane through Asyad’s autonomous freight trials at Sohar and Salalah.
That package is useful because it shows how Asyad is organising decarbonisation around operating corridors rather than single assets. The hydrogen term sheet with OQ Alternative Energy covers more than 91,000 kilograms of low-carbon hydrogen annually for a dedicated Duqm refuelling station, enough for eight to 10 heavy-duty hydrogen trucks per day and an estimated displacement of around 1,100 litres of conventional fuel daily. The numbers are small against national logistics demand, but they are large enough to test procurement, fuelling, vehicle utilisation and pricing assumptions.
The Duqm OPS study should be judged in the same way. The useful output would not be another announcement saying shore power is desirable. It would be a clear view on berth selection, vessel segments, connection frequency, likely MVA requirement, grid interface, tariff structure, ownership model, maintenance responsibility and whether drydock customers are willing to pay for connection as part of repair and conversion work.
For suppliers, the opportunity is obvious but still undefined. A bankable Duqm project could require grid integration, frequency conversion or electrical interface equipment, cable management, controls, metering, safety systems, civil works and service support. But until Asyad and MoonRock clarify the business model, the addressable scope remains open. That is why the Duqm study should be watched by OPS vendors as much as by port strategists.
For Oman, the strategic value would be greater than one yard connection. Sohar has already put MoonRock into a container-terminal OPS discussion. Duqm could extend the same national capability into ship repair and heavy industrial logistics. If those two use cases mature, Oman can begin to speak about shore power as part of a portfolio: container terminals, drydock operations, industrial ports and potentially future green corridors.
The risk is that the narrative runs ahead of the economics. OPS projects fail quietly when utilisation is weak, tariff recovery is unclear or the connection process is treated as an add-on rather than a service. Duqm has enough industrial weight to avoid that mistake, but only if the study is allowed to be commercially blunt. The right question is not whether Duqm should have shore power. It is which berths, which vessels, which payer and which utilisation assumptions make the first installation defensible.
