The Hajar Mountains in Oman contain one of the world’s largest exposed formations of peridotite — a rock from Earth’s mantle that naturally reacts with CO₂ and locks it away as solid mineral carbonate. The Semail Ophiolite alone has sequestered over one billion tonnes of CO₂ through this process, over millions of years.
Now someone’s trying to speed it up.
44.01, an Omani startup named after the molecular weight of carbon dioxide, has signed a concession with Oman’s Ministry of Energy and Minerals for the world’s first commercial-scale peridotite mineralization project at Al Qabil in the Hajar Mountains.
How It Works
44.01 dissolves captured CO₂ in water and injects it into peridotite deep underground, where it reacts with the rock and turns to solid mineral carbonate — permanently. An independent life cycle assessment found the process delivers a carbon removal efficiency of 88–91% across its entire supply chain.
Columbia University’s Peter Kelemen has calculated that if the natural mineralization process could be accelerated a millionfold through engineering, a single cubic kilometre of peridotite could theoretically absorb a billion tonnes of CO₂ per year. That’s the kind of number that makes geologists and CDR investors sit up.
Why Oman
Most CDR innovation happens in North America and Europe. Oman is emerging as a dark horse. The country has both the geology — massive peridotite formations pushed to the surface by tectonic forces — and the political will to position itself as a carbon storage hub as it diversifies beyond oil.
The concession model is interesting: it treats subsurface carbon storage rights like mineral extraction rights, creating a legal framework other countries could adopt.
New Research Adds Context
A new paper in Nature Communications, led by researchers from Keele University and the University of Manchester, has shed new light on how carbonated peridotite forms. The study confirms that these rocks represent a significant hidden carbon sink in Earth’s long-term carbon cycle — validating the geological premise behind 44.01’s approach.
What’s Next
Commercial scale is still a few years out. But having a government concession — the legal right to inject and store CO₂ — is the prerequisite everything else depends on. If 44.01 can prove commercial viability in Oman, the model could spread to other peridotite-rich regions in the Middle East, Papua New Guinea, and parts of the western Mediterranean.
For a field dominated by DAC and biochar headlines, in-situ mineralization is the quiet pathway worth watching.
Sources: Zawya · University of Manchester