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Houston chemical co. completes successful field trial of cleaner natural gas processing tech

successful trial

Merichem's technology removed 99 percent of hydrogen sulfide gas from natural gas streams without generating solid waste. Photo via Getty Images

Houston-based Merichem Technologies has announced successful results from the field trial of its new hydrogen sulfide (H2S) removal technology in the Permian Basin.

The technology, known as ECOTREAT, removed more than 99 percent of hydrogen sulfide gas from natural gas streams, or “sour gas,” without producing solid waste during the month-long trial. It also showed sustained performance even when operating above the unit’s design capacity, according to a news release.

“The industry is continually seeking to reduce both the price and complexity of removing hydrogen sulfide from gas production, especially since oil production has shifted to increasingly sour sources, higher gas ratios, and higher water ratios,” Jeff Gomach, SVP, Merichem Technologies, said in a news release. “ECOTREAT met all its field trial objectives and provides a highly effective method for removing hydrogen sulfide to prevent equipment corrosion, ensure worker safety, meet environmental regulations, and maintain product quality for transport.

H2S found in natural gas can turn the gas toxic or hazardous and lead to corrosion in pipelines and processing equipment. However, standard H2S removal technologies create high levels of solid waste. ECOTREAT resolves many of those issues by using an aqueous-phase proprietary catalytic process that converts H2S into dissolved thiosulfate.

Next, Merichem says it plans to move the technology out of the pilot stage to full-scale commercialization.

Merichem, an 80-plus-year-old company, initially launched as a soap and industrial cleaning company. It eventually transitioned to focus on energy technology.

In 2024, Black Bay Energy acquired a portion of Merichem Process Technologies and Merichem Catalyst Products, which would become Merichem Technologies.

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The Dune Express in West Texas. Courtesy of Atlas Energy

The longest conveyer belt in the U.S. is moving sand in Texas

The Dune Express

It's longer than the width of Rhode Island, snakes across the oil fields of the southwest U.S. and crawls at 10 mph – too slow for a truck and too long for a train.

It's a new sight: the longest conveyer belt in America.

Atlas Energy Solutions, a Texas-based oil field company, has installed a 42-mile long conveyer belt to transport millions of tons of sand for hydraulic fracturing. The belt the company named “The Dune Express” runs from tiny Kermit, Texas, and across state borders into Lea County, New Mexico. Tall and lanky with lids that resemble solar modules, the steel structure could almost be mistaken for a roller coaster.

In remote West Texas, there are few people to marvel at the unusual machine in Kermit, a city with a population of less than 6,000, where the sand is typically hauled by tractor-trailers. During fracking, liquid is pumped into the ground at a high pressure to create holes, or fractures, that release oil. The sand helps keep the holes open as water, oil and gas flow through it.

But moving the sand by truck is usually a long and potentially dangerous process, according to CEO John Turner. He said massive trucks moving sand and other industrial goods are a common site in the oil-rich Permian Basin and pose a danger to other drivers.

“Pretty early on, the delivery of sand via truck was not only inefficient, it was dangerous,” he said.

The conveyor belt, with a freight capacity of 13 tons, was designed to bypass and trudge alongside traffic.

Innovation isn't new to the oil and gas industry, nor is the idea to use a conveyor belt to move materials around. Another conveyer belt believed to be the world’s longest conveyor — at 61 miles long — carries phosphorous from a mine in Western Sahara on the northwest coast of Africa, according to NASA Earth Observatory.

When moving sand by truck became a nuisance, an unprecedented and risky investment opportunity arose: constructing a $400 million machine to streamline the production of hydraulic fracturing. The company went public in March 2023, in part, to help pay for the conveyor belt and completed its first delivery in January, Turner said.

The sand sits in a tray-shaped pan with a lid that can be taken off at any point, but most of it gets offloaded into silos near the Texas and New Mexico border. Along its miles-long journey, the sand is sold and sent to fracking companies who move it by truck for the remainder of the trip.

Keeping the rollers on the belt aligned and making sure it runs smoothly are the biggest maintenance obstacles, according to Turner. The rollers are equipped with chips that signal when it's about to fail and need to be replaced. This helps prevent wear and tear and keep the machine running consistently, Turner said.

The belt cuts through a large oil patch where environmentalists have long raised concerns about the industry disturbing local habitats, including those of the sagebrush lizard, which was listed as an endangered species last year by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“In addition to that, we know that the sand will expedite further drilling nearby,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “We could see more drilling than we otherwise would, which means more air pollution, more spills than we otherwise would.”

The Dune Express currently runs for about 12 to 14 hours a day at roughly half capacity but the company expects to it to be rolling along at all hours later this year.

In New Mexico, Lea County Commissioner Brad Weber said he hopes the belt alleviates traffic on a parallel highway where car crashes are frequent.

“I believe it’s going to make a very positive impact here,” he said.

Republicans and Democrats, environmental groups and the oil and gas industry all oppose the temporary sites. Photo via uh.edu

Supreme Court confronts what to do with growing pile of nuclear waste

The Debate Continues

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a fight over plans to store nuclear waste at sites in rural Texas and New Mexico.President Joe Biden's administration and a private company with a license for the Texas facility appealed a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission exceeded its authority in granting the license. The outcome of the case will affect plans for a similar facility in New Mexico roughly 40 miles away.

On this issue, President Donald Trump's administration is sticking with the views of its predecessor, even with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican ally of Trump, on the other side.

The push for temporary storage sites is part of the complicated politics of the nation’s so far futile quest for a permanent underground storage facility.

Here's what to know about the case.

Where is spent nuclear fuel stored now?

Roughly 100,000 tons of spent fuel, some of it dating from the 1980s, is piling up at current and former nuclear plant sites nationwide and growing by more than 2,000 tons a year. The waste was meant to be kept there temporarily before being deposited deep underground.

A plan to build a national storage facility northwest of Las Vegas at Yucca Mountain has been mothballed because of staunch opposition from most Nevada residents and officials.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said that the temporary storage sites are needed because existing nuclear plants are running out of room. The presence of the spent fuel also complicates plans to decommission some plants, the Justice Department said in court papers.

Where would it go?

The NRC granted the Texas license to Interim Storage Partners LLC for a facility that could take up to 5,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel rods from power plants and 231 million tons of other radioactive waste. The facility would be built next to an existing dump site in Andrews County for low-level waste, such as protective clothing and other material that has been exposed to radioactivity. The Andrews County site is about 350 miles west of Dallas, near the Texas-New Mexico state line.

The New Mexico facility would be in Lea County, in the southeastern part of the state near Carlsbad. The NRC gave a license for the site to Holtec International.

The licenses would allow for 40 years of storage, although opponents contend the facilities would be open indefinitely because of the impasse over permanent storage.

Political opposition is bipartisan

Republicans and Democrats, environmental groups and the oil and gas industry all oppose the temporary sites.

Abbott is leading Texas' opposition to the storage facility. New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham also is opposed to the facility planned for her state.

A brief led by Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on behalf of several lawmakers calls the nuclear waste contemplated for the two facilities an “enticing target for terrorists” and argues it's too risky to build the facility atop the Permian Basin, the giant oil and natural gas region that straddles Texas and New Mexico.

Elected leaders of communities on the routes the spent fuel likely would take to New Mexico and Texas also are opposed.

What are the issues before the court?

The justices will consider whether, as the NRC argues, the states forfeited their right to object to the licensing decisions because they declined to join in the commission’s proceedings.

Two other federal appeals courts, in Denver and Washington, that weighed the same issue ruled for the agency. Only the 5th Circuit allowed the cases to proceed.

The second issue is whether federal law allows the commission to license temporary storage sites. Opponents are relying on a 2022 Supreme Court decision that held that Congress must act with specificity when it wants to give an agency the authority to regulate on an issue of major national significance. In ruling for Texas, the 5th Circuit agreed that what to do with the nation’s nuclear waste is the sort of “major question” that Congress must speak to directly.

But the Justice Department has argued that the commission has long-standing authority to deal with nuclear waste reaching back to the 1954 Atomic Energy Act.

Some of those counties affected include production hot spots within the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico and the Permian Basin, which straddles the New Mexico-Texas line. Photo via Getty Images

New Mexico court upholds emissions crackdown impacting oil, gas operations along Texas border

eyes on the west

The New Mexico Court of Appeals has upheld regulations aimed at cracking down on emissions in one of the nation’s top-producing oil and gas states.

The case centered on a rule adopted in 2022 by state regulators that called for curbing the pollutants that chemically react in the presence of sunlight to create ground-level ozone, commonly known as smog. High ozone levels can cause respiratory problems, including asthma and chronic bronchitis.

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's administration has long argued that the adoption of the ozone precursor rule along with regulations to limit methane emissions from the industry were necessary to combat climate change and meet federal clean air standards.

New Mexico Environment Secretary James Kenney said the court's decision on Wednesday affirmed that the rule was properly developed and there was substantial evidence to back up its approval by regulators.

“These rules aren’t going anywhere,” Kenney said in a statement to The New Mexican, suggesting that the industry stop spending resources on legal challenges and start working to comply with New Mexico's requirements.

The Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico had argued in its appeal that the rule disproportionately affected independent operators.

“The administration needs to stop its ‘death by a thousand cuts’ hostility to the smaller, family-owned, New Mexico-based operators,” the group's executive director, Jim Winchester, said in an email to the newspaper.

The group is considering its legal options.

Under the rule, oil and gas operators must monitor emissions for smog-causing pollutants — nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds — and regularly check for and fix leaks.

The rule applies to eight counties — Chaves, Doña Ana, Eddy, Lea, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, San Juan and Valencia — where ozone pollutants have reached at least 95% of the federal ambient air quality standard. Some of those counties include production hot spots within the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico and the Permian Basin, which straddles the New Mexico-Texas line.

The industry group had argued that Chaves and Rio Arriba counties shouldn’t be included. The court disagreed, saying those counties are located within broader geographic regions that did hit that 95% threshold.

The Texas oil and gas giant earned $9.24 billion, or $2.14 per share, for the second quarter of 2024. Photo via exxonmobil.com

ExxonMobil second-quarter profit rises on Pioneer acquisition and surging production

looking back

ExxonMobil recorded one of its largest second-quarter profits in a decade on surging quarterly production from oil and gas fields in Guyana and the Permian basin in the U.S., as well its $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources.

The Texas oil and gas giant earned $9.24 billion, or $2.14 per share, for the three months ended June 30, topping last year's profit of $7.88 billion, or $1.94 per share.

The results topped Wall Street expectations, though Exxon does not adjust its reported results based on one-time events such as asset sales. Analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research were expecting earnings of $2.04 per share.

“We achieved record quarterly production from our low-cost-of-supply Permian and Guyana assets, with the highest oil production since the Exxon and Mobil merger," Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said in a prepared statement Friday.

The Pioneer deal contributed $500 million to earnings in the first two months after closing, Exxon said.

Revenue for the Spring, Texas, company totaled $93.06 billion, topping Wall Street's expectations for $90.38 billion.

Exxon's net production reached 4.4 million oil-equivalent barrels per day during the second quarter, an increase of 15% compared with the first three months of the year.

Oil prices are lower than they were at this point last year, and those high prices sent Exxon and other energy giants on a buying spree.

Exxon announced in July 2023 that it would pay $4.9 billion for Denbury Resources, an oil and gas producer that has entered the business of capturing and storing carbon and stands to benefit from changes in U.S. climate policy.

Three months later it said it would spend $60 billion on shale operator Pioneer Natural Resources. That deal received clearance from the Federal Trade Commission in May.

In October Chevron said it would buy Hess Corp. for $53 billion, joining the acquisitions race.

Chevron Corp. also reported its second-quarter financial results on Friday, which fell far short of profit expectations.

In addition, the company said that it is moving its headquarters from San Ramon, California, to Houston, Texas. Chevron expects all corporate functions to transition to Houston over the next five years, with positions in support of its California operations remaining in San Ramon. Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth and Vice Chairman Mark Nelson will move to Houston before the end of the year.

Chevron currently has about 7,000 employees in the Houston area and approximately 2,000 employees in San Ramon. The company runs crude oil fields, technical facilities, and two refineries and supplies more than 1,800 retail stations in California.

Its shares slipped 1.7% before the opening bell.

Shares of ExxonMobil Corp. fell slightly in premarket trading. Chevron shares fell 1.7%.

The recent quakes damaged homes, infrastructure, utility lines, and other property, weakening foundations and cracking walls and ceilings, officials said. Photo via Unsplash

Fresh quakes damage parts of Texas area with long history of tremors caused by oil and gas industry

shaking structures

Damaging earthquakes that rocked West Texas in recent days were likely caused by oil and gas activity in an area that has weathered tremors for decades, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

A sequence that began in 2021 erupted with its largest quake on Friday, a magnitude 5.1 in the most active area in the country for quakes induced by oil and gas activities, experts say. The recent quakes damaged homes, infrastructure, utility lines, and other property, weakening foundations and cracking walls and ceilings, officials said.

No injuries have been reported, the city of Snyder Office of Emergency Management said on Facebook. Officials declared a disaster in Scurry County.

“Safety is our top priority for all of our residents, and so we wanted to make sure we had all the available resources at our hands if we needed them,” said Jay Callaway, emergency management coordinator for the city of Snyder and Scurry County, of the disaster declaration. He added that despite resident concerns, a disaster declaration doesn't mean they were anticipating a “big one.” He said they continued to have small tremors on Monday.

There have been more than 50 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3 or larger — the smallest quakes generally felt by people are magnitude 2.5 to 3 — in the yearslong sequence, said Robert Skoumal, a research geophysicist with the USGS, in an email. A sequence is generally a swarm of earthquakes in a particular region motivated by the same activities, he said.

While Friday's was the largest in the sequence, officials have also recorded a recent 4.5, a 4.9 on July 23 and a 4.7 last year. A water line broke in the city of Snyder due to a quake last week, said Callaway, but it has been fixed.

“This particular portion of the Permian Basin has a long history of earthquakes induced by oil and gas operations, going back to at least the 1970s,” said Skoumal.

The Permian Basin, which stretches from southeastern New Mexico and covers most of West Texas, is a large basin known for its rich deposits of petroleum, natural gas and potassium and is composed of more than 7,000 fields in West Texas. It is the most active area of induced earthquakes in the country and likely the world, according to the USGS. The are many ways people can cause, or induce, earthquakes, but the vast majority of induced earthquakes in the Central United States are caused by oil and gas operations, Skoumal said.

Earthquakes were first introduced to the area via water flooding, a process in which water is injected into the ground to increase production from oil reservoirs.

Four other tremors larger than a magnitude 5 have rattled western Texas in the past few years. The biggest was a 5.4. “All four of these earthquakes were induced by wastewater disposal,” said Skoumal.

Further analysis is needed to confirm the specific cause of the region’s earthquakes, but because the area isn’t naturally seismic and has a long history of induced earthquakes, “these recent earthquakes are likely to also have been induced by oil and gas operations,” said Skoumal.

Oklahoma experienced a dramatic spike in the number of earthquakes in the early 2010s that researchers linked to wastewater from oil and gas extraction that was being injected deep into the ground, activating ancient faults deep within the earth’s crust. The wastewater is left over from oil and natural gas production and includes saltwater, drilling fluids and other mineralized water.

The large increase in Oklahoma quakes more than a decade ago led state regulators to place restrictions on the disposal of wastewater, particularly in areas around the epicenter of quakes. Since then, the number of quakes began to decline dramatically.

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Houston startups named to World Economic Forum cohort for carbon removal, clean technologies

top honor

Two Houston-based startups have been selected to join the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneers community.

The two-year program aims to help mission-driven, early-stage start-ups scale their innovations through multi-stakeholder initiatives, co-creating partnerships and other gatherings for community members. One-hundred startups are selected each year from around the globe, this year hailing from 23 countries and working in AI, energy, space, biotech markets and more.

Cleantech startup Vaulted Deep was one of 11 energy and climate companies to be named to the cohort. Julia Reichelstein and Omar Abou-Sayed founded the company in 2023. Its technology injects excess organic waste underground to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Last year, Vaulted Deep inked a 12-year deal with Microsoft to remove up to 4.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the environment.

The startup has earned several accolades in recent years, including a No. 3 spot on Fast Company’s list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies of 2026. It was also recently named to market intelligence and advisory firm Cleantech Group's annual Global Cleantech 100 list for a second year in a row.

"Waste management is one of the world's great invisible infrastructure systems ... The need for new infrastructure is growing as disposal challenges become more complex and regulations evolve. Vaulted is building the first new disposal pathway for organic waste in decades by putting it deep underground, permanently," the company shared in a LinkedIn post. "This year, we're joining the World Economic Forum's 2026 Tech Pioneers alongside innovators working on the many interconnected challenges shaping our future."

Houston-based Venus Aerospace was also selected to join the cohort, along with six other spacetech companies. The company was founded in 2020 by Sassie and Andrew Duggleby.

The startup specializes in next-generation rocket engine propulsion as a cleaner alternative to traditional combustion engines. The company's rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) burns fuel more efficiently and completed a successful high-thrust test flight last year. Venus says it’s the only company in the world that makes a flight-proven, high-thrust RDRE with a “clear path to scaled production.”

"Frontier technologies matter most when they expand what people, industries, and nations can do," Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus, said in a news release. "For Venus, RDRE does not just represent a more efficient engine. It is a foundation for faster movement, more capable space systems, and new forms of connectivity across the planet. Being named a Technology Pioneer validates the potential of this technology to help shape a future where distance is less limiting."

Premium EV robotaxis from Uber will roll into Houston next year

Rolling On

More autonomous vehicles are expected to hit the roads in Houston next year.

Ridesharing giant Uber announced that it plans to roll out its premium robotaxi service in the Bayou City in mid-2027. Houston will be Uber’s second planned market for the program, following the San Francisco Bay Area, where the program is expected to be rolled out later this year.

Uber, Nuro and Lucid Group will bring the robotaxi program to Houston with more markets planned for the future. Currently, Nuro is conducting autonomous on-road testing with safety operators in Houston. Testing includes simulation, closed-course testing and supervised public-road testing.

“Houston is a city Nuro knows well, and we’re excited to help bring this robotaxi service to the city through our partnership with Uber and Lucid,” Andrew Chapin, chief operating officer at Nuro, said in a news release. “Houston’s large, complex metro area is an ideal market for demonstrating how Nuro’s universal autonomy platform can generalize across different geographies and operating environments. We look forward to continued engagement with the community as we prepare to launch service in 2027.”

The fleet of 100 vehicles across California and Texas will feature Lucid Gravity EVs and future Lucid Midsize vehicles equipped with Nuro Driver technology, Nuro’s Level 4 universal autonomy platform, plus a redundant sensor suite with cameras, lidar, radar and a roof-mounted halo.

The vehicles will be owned and operated by Uber and its fleet partners and made available to riders through the Uber network, according to the company.

In addition to the fleet of autonomous vehicles, Uber also announced that it has secured a 50,000-square-foot depot facility and dedicated charging pitstop in Houston. The facility will allow Uber and its partners to control vehicle maintenance, repairs, charging, cleaning, and day-to-day operations.

“Houston marks an important next step in our partnership with Lucid and Nuro as we expand autonomous mobility to more riders throughout the world,” Sarfraz Maredia, global head of autonomous mobility & delivery at Uber, added in the release. “Together, we’re combining best-in-class vehicle and autonomy technology with Uber’s scale, fleet operations expertise, and infrastructure capabilities to build a service that can grow across dozens of markets in the years ahead.”

Waymo launched its autonomous vehicle program in Houston in February.

The company later suspended its driverless car services in Houston, other major Texas cities, and Atlanta, after one of its vehicles was stranded by flooding during heavy rains. However, according to the Houston Chronicle, the fleet has resumed activity in Houston and is fully active.

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This article originally appeared on InnovationMap.com.

Chevron inks 20-year deal to power massive Microsoft data center in West Texas

power deal

Chevron and Microsoft have signed a 20-year deal in which Chevron will provide natural-gas-fired power for a future West Texas data center, known as Project Kilby.

The proposed Microsoft data center could be one of the biggest in the U.S. and is expected to deliver 2.67 gigawatts of capacity. It will be built through a “phased, modular approach that enables incremental expansion over time,” according to Chevron.

Chevron expects the facility to be up and running by 2028, though the company won’t make a final investment decision on the project until later this year. The company is collaborating on Project Kilby with investment fund Engine No.1.

Project Kilby is projected to bring in $10 billion in state and local tax revenue and support 2,000 jobs, according to Chevron. The plant will use non-potable, brackish groundwater for power plant operations and aims to find new ways to reuse water produced by oil and gas operations.

The site will use selective catalytic reduction systems to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions and minimize noise and light impacts and will utilize other advanced air emissions control technologies. A majority of the generation will come from large turbines developed by Chevron partner GE Verona with additional capacity from Caterpillar’s solar turbines. The plant will be fed by natural gas from the Permian Basin.

“Chevron is uniquely positioned to deliver power to customers with certainty, speed and at a competitive cost, leveraging Permian natural gas and our proven execution capabilities,” Jeff Gustavson, Chevron president of new energies, said in a news release. “This project links Chevron’s traditional strengths to emerging demand, creating differentiated value for our shareholders and the communities where we operate.”

According to BloombergNEF, the U.S. is expected to increase its data center capacity to 77 gigawatts by 2030. Another report from Bloom Energy predicts Texas will see a 142 percent increase in its market share for data centers from 2025 to 2028.

“The rapid growth we’re experiencing in AI and cloud, driven by customer demand, requires energy infrastructure that can scale quickly and reliably,” Noelle Walsh, Microsoft president of cloud operations and innovation, added in the news release. “Our agreement with Chevron helps ensure we’ll have dedicated, large-scale power to support the evolution and reliability of advanced computers. Through this partnership, we’re delighted to grow with and become a deeper part of the West Texas community.”

Chevron was named No. 21 on the 2026 Fortune 500 list earlier this month.

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