LONDON (Alliance News) - Velocys PLC on Thursday said construction at its Envia Energy GTL plant in Oklahoma City, US is progressing well with system integration, piping and electrical work ongoing, and elsewhere in the business multiple opportunities are progressing towards firm orders.
The small scale gas-to-liquids company said, since it made USD12.0 million available to its Eniva Energy joint venture in February, it has gained a greater influence in the commissioning, start-up and operations of the plant and has been further engaged to provide an operability review, commissioning planning and training for Envia's power plant project.
Envia Energy is a joint venture among Velocys, Waste Management Inc, NRG Energy Inc and Ventech Engineers International LLC . The companies are aiming to produce renewables fuels and chemicals from biogas and natural gas using gas-to-liquid technology.
Velocys said in its update on Thursday it has signed a second agreement with the joint venture for a team of experienced Velocys operators and engineers to be on-site serving under the Envia plant manager during commissioning and start-up until the end of 2016. The Velocys commissioning team has commenced its deployment to the Oklahoma City site, Velocys said.
All modular process units, including those incorporating the Velocys reactors, and all other major packaged equipment skids, including the steam methane reformer, cooling towers, landfill gas inlet and syngas compression units have been set in place on site, the company added.
Elsewhere, Velocys said it continues to progress the opportunities in its commercial pipeline, including with its Red Rock Biofuels customer which is continuing to make progress on permitting, financing and offtake agreements for its biomass-to-liquuids plant in Oregon, US.
Additionally, Velocys has completed its part of the engineering study underway for a project being developed by a national gas company in Central Asia that is seeking to develop its stranded gas reserves, the company said.
In the first half of the year, Velocys noted it has also carried our further analysis of the wax market inn North America, which confirmed that the projected plant economics for its Ashtabula GTL plant remain attractive. The plant is focused on the production of waxes.
However, given the challenges in raising equity for capital projects of this nature at present and in order to defer costs, Velocys has put its development of Ashtabula on hold, pending reassessment as part of the broad review of the strategy of the business that the company is currently undertaking.
Shares in Velocys were up 4.4% at 31.18 pence on Thursday.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland
Copyright 2016 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
