The combined commercial and demonstration plant will annually produce about 60 million gallons of finished gasoline from natural gas while providing the platform for Sundrop Fuels to prove its proprietary gasification technology for making renewable “green gasoline” from woody biomass.

In June 2012, the company finalized a licensing agreement to use ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company’s methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) technology for use in the “green gasoline” production facility.

The company plans to build a series of renewable gasoline “megaplants,” each producing more than 200 million gallons of drop-in cellulosic biofuel annually. Sundrop Fuels expects to eventually have four such facilities in operation, representing a combined production capacity of more than one billion gallons—a significant percentage of the total cellulosic advanced biofuels goal set by the US Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS).

Sundrop Fuels has begun site preparation on the combined commercial and demonstration plant, which will occupy approximately 100 of the 1,213 acres that the company purchased in February. Formal construction is scheduled to begin late this year, with operations expected to begin at the end of 2015.

Sundrop Fuels is backed by its strategic partner, Chesapeake Energy Corp., and by Oak Investment Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.