m&a moves

Geothermal co. with Houston office acquires former fracking biz

CeraPhi Energy acquired the business of Third Energy Limited, a former fracking company. Photo via ceraphi.com

A geothermal company with Houston ties has made a strategic acquisition.

CeraPhi Energy acquired the business of Third Energy Limited, which is a former fracking company, with plans to repurpose the existing wells into clean geothermal energy centers. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition is set to include subsidiaries like Third Energy Trading Limited, Wolfland Renewables Limited, Wolfland Utilities Limited, Third Energy UK Gas Limited, and 50 percent holding in West Heslerton Renewables Limited.

The assets are located in North Yorkshire U.K. and include eight well sites consisting of 12 former gas wells in a suspended state, 22.4 km of 6-inch and 16.6 km of 3-inch subterranean pipelines and a further 22.4 km of buried fiber optic comms lines.

CeraPhi, which has a Houston office in Greentown Labs, completed a commercial demonstration of its CeraPhiWell system in 2023 using the Third Energy KMA site.

The company's strategy aims to “de-risk the scaling and commercialisation of large-scale heat networks using boreholes down to a depth of 2km, reducing the space required for deployment of large-scale systems and increasing the extraction of thermal energy available for network connections,” according to its website.

“By using the inexhaustible resource beneath our feet using closed-loop technology we can access this energy anywhere with zero environmental risk, requiring no hydraulic fracturing, no use of water and providing enough energy within the next 15 years to solve our energy crisis indefinitely,” says CEO Karl Farrow in a news release.

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A View From HETI

Ørsted, which maintains offices in Houston and Austin, just flipped the switch on its 468-megawatt Mockingbird Solar Center in Lamar County, a project that also established a nearby nature preserve. Photo courtesy of Ørsted

The largest solar project in the global portfolio of Danish renewable energy company Ørsted is now supplying power to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid.

Ørsted, which maintains offices in Houston and Austin, just flipped the switch on its 468-megawatt Mockingbird Solar Center in Lamar County, which is northeast of Dallas-Fort Worth and directly south of the Texas-Oklahoma border. The $500 million project can produce enough power for 80,000 homes and businesses.

ERCOT provides power to more than 25 million Texas customers, representing 90 percent of the state’s electric load.

In conjunction with the solar project, Ørsted donated 953 acres to The Nature Conservancy to establish the Smiley Meadow Preserve. This area, adjacent to the Mockingbird facility, protects a tallgrass prairie habitat featuring more than 400 species of grasses and wildflowers. Accounting for land already owned by the conservancy, Smiley Meadow exceeds 1,000 acres.

“Through the power of partnership, Ørsted has helped The Nature Conservancy protect an irreplaceable landscape that might otherwise have been lost to development,” Suzanne Scott, The Nature Conservancy’s Texas state director, says in a news release.

Mockingbird Solar Center is part of Ørsted’s $20 billion investment in U.S. energy generation. With this project now online, Ørsted owns a portfolio of more than six gigawatts of onshore wind, solar, and battery storage projects that either are operating or are being built.

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