NET Power Indefinitely Suspends Baker Hughes Oxy-Combustion Partnership
Strategic Reversal
Company Background
NET Power Inc. (NYSE: NPWR) is a pre-revenue energy technology and project development company that was founded in 2010 around a proprietary oxy-combustion technology known as the NET Power Cycle. The technology promised to generate natural gas power while capturing carbon dioxide at the point of combustion, using Baker Hughes-developed turbomachinery. The company went public and entered into a commercialization partnership with Baker Hughes designed to put the technology into utility-scale power plants.
Over the past year, NET Power has executed a series of strategic shifts. In November 2025, the company broadened its strategy to include conventional gas turbines paired with post-combustion carbon capture, describing the oxy-combustion pathway as a longer-term option. By August 2026, it had pivoted further still, directing near-term capital toward unabated natural gas generation — specifically a project in West Texas called Project Permian — and treating carbon capture as a later-phase add-on as customer demand and financing permit.
The company held approximately $310 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments as of June 30, 2026, down from $424 million as of September 30, 2025. On August 31, 2026, it paid $97.6 million in cash to acquire EPC rights to a 123-megawatt natural gas power facility from EMPower USA, simultaneously assuming approximately $177.8 million in additional future payment commitments under that contract. No power offtake agreement, project-level financing, or partner capital for Project Permian had been committed as of August 13, 2026.
What Was Disclosed
On September 8, 2026, NET Power and its subsidiaries entered into three integrated agreements with Baker Hughes affiliates Nuovo Pignone S.r.l. and Nuovo Pignone International S.r.l.: a suspension of the Amended and Restated Joint Development Agreement originally dated December 13, 2022; a suspension of the Commercial Agreement effective May 12, 2022; and an amendment to the License Agreement dated February 3, 2022. Together, the agreements indefinitely suspend utility-scale oxy-combustion joint development and commercialization, terminate Baker Hughes' access to and exclusivity over the La Porte, Texas demonstration facility, and establish revised industrial-scale licensing terms. The suspension is retroactively effective from January 1, 2026 — a temporary suspension had been in place under a letter agreement since that date, extended through June 30, 2026 while the parties negotiated the permanent arrangement.