As of July 11, 2026, the direct reduced iron (DRI) plant of Jindal Steel Oman in Sohar operated continuously for 188 days without any unplanned downtime. Its 6.5‑meter shaft furnace set a monthly production record of 185,710 mt in May 2026, averaging an operating rate of 249.6 mt per hour. Output at the facility exceeded its originally designed capacity of 1.5 million mt by 33%, establishing a new global benchmark for operational efficiency.
This unit in Sohar integrates gas‑based direct reduction (reducing iron ore with syngas from natural gas reforming) with a 220‑mt Danieli electric arc furnace (EAF). Hot DRI is charged directly into the EAF via gravity—a system billed as the world’s first gravity‑fed hot DRI charging system, delivering significant energy savings. The EAF side also set records in early 2026: monthly output of 235,112 mt of liquid steel and a production rate of 324 mt per hour, with a charge mix of 61% hot DRI, 37% cold DRI and 2% hot briquetted iron (HBI), and power consumption of 493 kWh per mt of steel. In other words, from reduction to melting, this is an integrated DRI‑EAF route designed to squeeze every bit of efficiency, with the shaft furnace’s high‑stability operation serving as the foundation of the entire chain’s efficiency.
The weight of Jindal’s record lies in the fact that it sits within a sustained, strengthening megatrend. According to Midrex and worldsteel, global DRI production reached 140.8 million mt in 2024, a new all‑time high and up 3.8% YoY (the previous record was 135.7 million mt in 2023). Since 2019, cumulative growth has been about 32.7 million mt, an increase of more than 30%. More remarkably, this growth outpaced the roughly 1% mild rise in global crude steel production over the same period—the direct reduction route is steadily gaining share in the overall steel landscape. The Midrex process accounted for 54.1% of total output and roughly 80.1% of shaft‑furnace DRI.
This growth, however, is highly concentrated. In 2024, India remained the world’s largest producer at 54.7 million mt, accounting for more than one‑third of the total; Iran followed with 34.7 million mt. Together, these two countries contributed about 63% of global production. Next came Russia (8.0 million mt), Saudi Arabia (6.6 million mt) and Egypt (6.4 million mt). The landscape splits broadly into two parts: one is India’s vast domestic demand system, dominated by coal‑based rotary‑kiln sponge iron; the other is the gas‑based DRI cluster in the Middle East and North Africa built on cheap natural gas—Jindal’s Sohar plant in Oman belongs to the latter. Such concentration also means that any disruption in gas supply, energy policy or geopolitics anywhere is magnified to the global DRI supply level.
Gas‑Based DRI’s Role in the Decarbonization Landscape
To understand the strategic value of such plants, one must place them in the carbon‑intensity context. According to worldsteel’s typical route values, the blast furnace–converter integrated route emits about 2.3 mt CO₂ per mt of steel; the scrap‑based EAF route is the lowest at about 0.7 mt; and the gas‑based DRI–EAF route sits in the middle at about 1.43 mt. This means that, before green‑hydrogen‑based direct reduction truly reaches scale, gas‑based DRI is the most realistic low‑carbon iron source beyond the blast furnace—it is not zero‑carbon, but it already reduces the carbon footprint to roughly 60% of that of the integrated route. A highly efficient, low‑cost and stably operating gas‑based DRI plant like Jindal Sohar is precisely at the sweet spot of this transition pathway.
From the trade perspective of the ferrous industry chain, Middle Eastern gas‑based DRI and HBI have long played the role of supplying green steel to Europe, Turkey and the US. In 2024, the top five global DRI importers were the US (1.5 million mt), Turkey (1.2 million mt), India (900,000 mt), Mexico (800,000 mt) and Italy (700,000 mt). As the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) moves into the actual payment phase and embedded carbon costs rise year by year, the premium space for low‑carbon iron exports to Europe is opening up. Facilities that can spread fixed costs more thinly per unit and push annual output to 133% of nameplate capacity are exactly the most resilient marginal suppliers in this trade flow. In this light, Jindal’s 188‑day record is far more than a simple milestone.
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