Air Products expects to wrap up its capital spending on energy transition projects by 2029 as the company prioritizes its Industrial Gases sector, CEO Eduardo Menezes said during the company’s Q3 2026 earnings call on November 5.
Energy transition projects (orange bar segments in slide below), combined with the NEOM green hydrogen project in Saudi Arabia (blue bar segments) and projects it has already exited (gray bar segments), are expected to account for about half of the company’s $3.3 billion in capital expenses in FY2026. Menezes said the remaining energy transition projects will require about $2 billion in capex, most of that to be spent in 2027.
“And with that, we will close the expenditures on the energy transition projects,” Menezes said, with the goal to reduce overall capex to $2 billion to $2.5 billion per year.
Source: Air Products
The company’s backlog of Industrial Gases projects is about $3.3 billion, which Menezes said includes “a healthy pipeline of opportunities.”
“Our goal long term is to have a backlog … for regular industrial gas projects in the range of $4 billion to $4.5 billion that allow us to start every year (with) $1.5 billion to $2 billion in projects,” Menezes said.
The company’s hydrogen and carbon monoxide (HyCO) segment was operating at full capacity in the U.S., which Menezes said was driven by strong demand for refined products and a shortage of global refining capacity. He also said they were not changing their expectations about how soon the conflict in the Middle East might be resolved based on the results of the midterm election.
“Things can change very quickly, and the Strait (of Hormuz) may be open in a month and things can go back to normal, but that’s not the base assumption that we use today,” he said.
