KiOR signs second offtake agreement for renewable gasoline and diesel blendstocks
03 May 2011
KiOR, Inc., developer of a catalytic pyrolysis process to produce renewable oil from biomass (earlier post), and Catchlight Energy LLC (CLE), a 50-50 joint venture between subsidiaries of Chevron Corporation and Weyerhaeuser Company focused on providing liquid transportation fuels from sustainable forest-based resources, signed a conditional offtake agreement for CLE to purchase gasoline and diesel fuel blendstocks from KiOR’s first commercial production facility in Columbus, Mississippi.
CLE’s purchase of products is contingent on, among other things, satisfaction of product specification criteria and RIN certification of the products as cellulosic biofuels under the US Renewable Fuel Standard. The companies have also signed a Testing and Optimization Agreement to optimize the compatibility of KiOR’s blendstocks with Chevron’s facilities.
This is the second offtake agreement KiOR has signed for its Columbus, MS, facility, having announced an agreement with Hunt Refining Company in March of 2011. (Earlier post.) KiOR expects to begin production at its Columbus facility in the second half of 2012.
KiOR combines a proprietary catalyst system with a biomass-to-renewable crude conversion technology to produce a high-quality oil called Re-Crude using a process similar to Fluid Catalytic Cracking used in the oil industry. Re-Crude is refined into gasoline and diesel blendstocks that are compatible with existing fuel infrastructure.
I believe that Exxon and Chevron got into natural gas for synthetic fuels. They intend to be your fuel company for many more decades and this is the plan.
Posted by: SJC | 03 May 2011 at 01:09 PM