Innovative Houston-based CO2 capture company gets acquired

M&A moves

Milestone Carbon has leased more that 22,000 acres of land in the Permian Basin for the permanent geologic sequestration of CO2. Photo via milestone-es.com

Houston-based Milestone Environmental Services announced this month that it has been acquired by affiliates of SK Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount.

The New York-based private investment firm, which specializes in the materials, ingredients, and life sciences sectors, now has a controlling stake of Milestone, which will continue to be led by its president and CEO Gabriel Rio.

Rio founded Milestone in 2014. The company is one of the largest independent providers of waste management services for the U.S. energy and industrial sectors. It focuses on permanent carbon sequestration services through its proprietary slurry injection process, which stores hydrocarbon waste over a mile underground.

The company's subsidiary, Milestone Carbon, is developing injection sites that permanently and securely sequester CO2. Earlier this month, Milestone Carbon announced that it has leased more that 22,000 acres of land in the Permian Basin for the permanent geologic sequestration of CO2 as part of the "sequestration hub" it is developing.

According to the company, once operating, the hub will help reduce emission related to natural gas processing, electricity generation and other industries. It's slated to be one of the first sequestration hubs in the basin.

"We founded Milestone to boldly advance sustainability in the energy industry and beyond," Rios says in a statement. "Our offerings enable companies to reduce their carbon footprint and enhance their ability to meet sustainability goals. Permanent, safe sequestration of carbon is an essential part of combating climate change, and Milestone has the strategy and capabilities to play a leading role in delivering solutions to multiple industries.”

According to a statement, Milestone has sequestered more than 2 million tons of CO2e through its injection process. The company has stated that it believes its sequestration hub will help attract new industries and technologies, hydrogen, low-carbon ammonia, and low-carbon power, to West Texas.

"We are highly impressed with the market-leading, sustainability-driven business that Gabriel and the Milestone management team have built," Jack Norris, a managing director of SK Capital, said in a statement. "It is well-positioned to further grow its core business in difficult-to-abate industries as environmental regulations become more stringent and Milestone’s customers are increasingly focused on meeting ambitious decarbonization targets. We are excited to partner with management to capture this growth opportunity as well as support its further progress towards becoming a leader in CCS and other related markets.”

Earlier this summer, Houston-based Occidental also got in on a carbon capture acquisition. Occidental says its all-cash acquisition of Carbon Engineering is set to close by the end of 2023. The Canada-based company focuses on direct carbon capture (DAC), which vacuums about 50 percent to 60 percent of the carbon dioxide from the air that passes through the system’s fans.

Oxy was granted $600 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop South Texas Direct Air Capture (DAC) Hub earlier this year. It’ll be located on about 106,000 leased acres within a Kleberg County site at the iconic King Ranch. The hub will comprise 30 individual DAC projects.

The U.S. Department of Energy also recently invested more than $10 million in funding for four DAC projects with Houston ties.

Occidental says its all-cash acquisition of Canada-based Carbon Engineering is set to close by the end of 2023. Photo via carbonengineering.com

Oxy acquires carbon capture co. in $1.1B deal

betting on dac

In yet another bet on direct carbon capture (DAC), Houston-based Occidental has agreed to purchase a DAC technology company for $1.1 billion.

Occidental says its all-cash acquisition of Canada-based Carbon Engineering is set to close by the end of 2023. Carbon Engineering was founded in 2009.

Under the deal, Carbon Engineering would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, the investment arm of Occidental. Carbon Engineering employees will work with teams at Occidental and its low-carbon subsidiary, 1PointFive, on DAC technology. The company’s R&D and innovation units will remain in Squamish, British Columbia.

Occidental has been a key DAC partner of Carbon Engineering since 2019.

“We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Carbon Engineering team, which has been a leader in pioneering and advancing DAC technology,” Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, says in an August 15 news release. “Together, Occidental and Carbon Engineering can accelerate plans to globally deploy DAC technology at a climate-relevant scale and make DAC the preferred solution for businesses seeking to remove their hard-to-abate emissions.”

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate owns about one-fourth of the shares of publicly traded Occidental.

In conjunction with Carbon Engineering, Occidental’s 1PointFive is building Stratos, the world’s largest DAC plant. The Ector County facility, scheduled to begin operating in mid-2025, is projected to extract up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. It’s anticipated that Stratos will employ more than 1,000 people during construction and up to 75 people once the plant is up and running.

Occidental and Carbon Engineering are adapting Stratos’ engineering and design features for a DAC plant to be built on a site at South Texas’ King Ranch. The South Texas DAC Hub, which is on track to create about 2,500 jobs, recently received a roughly $600 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

1PointFive plans to open as many as 135 DAC facilities around the world by 2035, with the capacity to capture 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

DAC technology pulls carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere at any location and permanently stores the CO2 or uses it for other purposes. By contrast, carbon capture sucks carbon dioxide from the air near where emissions are generated and then permanently stores the CO2 or uses it for other purposes.

A DAC system vacuums about 50 percent to 60 percent of the carbon dioxide from the air that passes through the system’s fans.

DAC “is shaping up to be a key component of meeting net-zero emissions goals in the United States,” according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Ad Placement 300x100

Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston scientists develop 'recharge-to-recycle' reactor for lithium-ion batteries

reduce, recharge, recycle

Engineers at Rice University have developed a cleaner, innovative process to turn end-of-life lithium-ion battery waste into new lithium feedstock.

The findings, recently published in the journal Joule, demonstrate how the team’s new “recharge-to-recycle” reactor recharges the battery’s waste cathode materials to coax out lithium ions into water. The team was then able to form high-purity lithium hydroxide, which was clean enough to feed directly back into battery manufacturing.

The study has major implications for the electric vehicle sector, which significantly contributes to the waste stream from end-of-life battery packs. Additionally, lithium tends to be expensive to mine and refine, and current recycling methods are energy- and chemical-intensive.

“Directly producing high-purity lithium hydroxide shortens the path back into new batteries,” Haotian Wang, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, co-corresponding author of the study and co-founder of Solidec, said in a news release. “That means fewer processing steps, lower waste and a more resilient supply chain.”

Sibani Lisa Biswal, chair of Rice’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the William M. McCardell Professor in Chemical Engineering, also served as co-corresponding author on the study.

“We asked a basic question: If charging a battery pulls lithium out of a cathode, why not use that same reaction to recycle?” Biswal added in the release. “By pairing that chemistry with a compact electrochemical reactor, we can separate lithium cleanly and produce the exact salt manufacturers want.”

The new process also showed scalability, according to Rice. The engineers scaled the device to 20 square centimeters, then ran a 1,000-hour stability test and processed 57 grams of industrial black mass supplied by industry partner Houston-based TotalEnergies. The results produced lithium hydroxide that was more than 99 percent pure. It also maintained an average lithium recovery rate of nearly 90 percent over the 1,000-hour test, showing its durability. The process also worked across multiple battery chemistries, including lithium iron phosphate, lithium manganese oxide and nickel-manganese-cobalt variants.

Looking ahead, the team plans to scale the process and consider ways it can sustain high efficiency for greater lithium hydroxide concentrations.

“We’ve made lithium extraction cleaner and simpler,” Biswal added in the release. “Now we see the next bottleneck clearly. Tackle concentration, and you unlock even better sustainability.

Houston grid's $2.9 billion upgrade tops energy news to know

Trending Topics

Editor's note: It's time to look back at the top energy transition news in recent weeks. Here are the five most-read EnergyCapitalHTX stories from November 16-30:

1. CenterPoint gets go-ahead for $2.9B upgrade of Houston grid

CenterPoint customers in the Houston area will pay an extra $1 a month to cover costs of the recently approved $2.9 billion resiliency plan starting next year. Photo via centerpointenergy.com

Texas utility regulators have given the green light for Houston-based CenterPoint Energy to spend $2.9 billion on strengthening its Houston-area electric grid to better withstand extreme weather. The cost of the plan is nearly $3 billion below what CenterPoint initially proposed to the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Continue reading.

2. Houston company wins contract to operate South Texas wind farm

Houston-based CAMS will operate the Mesteño Wind Project, which is home to one of the tallest wind turbine installations in the U.S. Photo via Unsplash.

Houston-based Consolidated Asset Management Services (CAMS), which provides services for owners of energy infrastructure, has added the owner of a South Texas wind power project to its customer list. The new customer, InfraRed Capital Partners, owns the 202-megawatt Mesteño Wind Project in the Rio Grande Valley. Continue reading.

3. Google's $40B investment in Texas data centers includes energy infrastructure

Google is investing in Texas. Courtesy of Google

Google is investing a huge chunk of money in Texas: According to a release, the company will invest $40 billion on cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, with the development of new data centers in Armstrong and Haskell counties. The company announced its intentions at a meeting on November 14 attended by federal, state, and local leaders including Gov. Greg Abbott who called it "a Texas-sized investment." Continue reading.

4. Chevron and ExxonMobil feed the need for gas-powered data centers

Chevron plans to launch its first AI data center power project in West Texas in 2027. Photo via Chevron.com

Two of the Houston area’s oil and gas goliaths, Chevron and ExxonMobil, are duking it out in the emerging market for natural gas-powered data centers—centers that would ease the burden on electric grids. Chevron said it’s negotiating with an unnamed company to supply natural gas-generated power for the data center industry, whose energy consumption is soaring mostly due to AI. Continue reading.

5. Solidec partners with Australian company for clean hydrogen peroxide pilot

Houston-based Solidec has partnered with Lynas Rare Earth on a clean hydrogen peroxide production pilot in Australia. Photo courtesy Greentown Labs.

Solidec has partnered with Australia-based Lynas Rare Earth, an environmentally responsible producer of rare earth oxides and materials, to reduce emissions from hydrogen peroxide production. The partnership marks a milestone for the Houston-based clean chemical manufacturing startup, as it would allow the company to accelerate the commercialization of its hydrogen peroxide generation technology. Continue reading.

DOE taps Texas companies for $56M in Strategic Petroleum Reserve deliveries

reserve refill

Two companies with ties to the Houston area have been awarded federal contracts totaling nearly $55.8 million to supply about 1 million barrels of crude oil for the nation’s depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Houston-based Trafigura Trading will provide two-thirds of the oil, and Dallas-based Energy Transfer Crude Marketing will provide the remaining one-third. Energy Transfer, the parent company of Energy Transfer Crude Marketing, operates a 330-acre oil terminal at the Houston Ship Channel.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which awarded the contracts, said Trafigura and Energy Transfer will deliver the crude oil from Dec. 1 through Jan. 31 to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s Bryan Mound storage site near Freeport.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the world’s largest emergency supply of crude oil, can hold up to 714 million barrels of crude oil across 61 underground salt caverns at four sites along the Gulf Coast. The reserve currently contains 410 million barrels of crude oil. During the pandemic, the Biden administration ordered a 180 million-barrel drawdown from the reserve to help combat high gas prices triggered by Russia’s war with Ukraine.

The four strategic reserve sites are connected to 24 Gulf Coast refineries, and another six refineries in Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

“Awarding these contracts marks another step in the important process of refilling this national security asset,” U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.

In March, Wright estimated it would take $20 billion and many years to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its maximum capacity, according to Reuters

View All Listings

ENERGYCAPITALHTX EMAILS ARE AWESOME