Directa Plus awarded oil decontamination contract in Romania

(Sharecast News) - Graphene-based products producer Directa Plus announced on Monday that its newly-acquired subsidiary Setcar - to be renamed Directa Environmental Services - has been awarded a contract to provide a suite of environmental decontamination services on the Trinity-1X gas project in Block 30, offshore Romania.

The AIM-traded firm said the contract covered the three-month period to the end of February for the appraisal of the Trident gas field contained in Block 30 in water depth of around 1,000 meters, by the general contractor, GSP.

Lukoil and Romgaz are the operators of Block 30, with the value of the contract estimated to be about $1m.

The board said the award of the contract reflected Setcar's more-than-25 years of experience as a service provider to the Romanian onshore oil and gas industry, and the advantages of using Directa Plus's graphene-based 'Grafysorber' technology in decontaminating water, sludges and drilling muds containing oil.

It said the appraisal of the Trident gas field, with potential reserves exceeding 30 billion cubic metres of gas, was a "complex" deep-water project which could open up "new and significant" offshore opportunities for Directa Plus's environmental services offering.

The company described its proprietary Grafysorber technology as a commercially-available graphene-based solution for treating water contaminated by hydrocarbons, being at least five times more effective than current technologies, adsorbing more than 100 times its own weight of oil-based pollutants.

In addition, Grafysorber was said to be sustainably produced, non-flammable and reusable, with the adsorbed hydrocarbons recoverable.

"This contract is the first demonstration of the rationale behind our recent acquisition," said Directa Plus founder and chief executive officer Giulio Cesareo.

"The contract is the latest collaboration with our partners GSP and is our first offshore, deep water contract.

"It will provide valuable experience to help accelerate the growth of our graphene-based decontamination services business in the oil and gas space."

Cesareo said the agreement was also a demonstration of the firm's strategy to make its own future less dependent on others, by capturing the maximum value from the supply chains it entered, rather than just supplying the key ingredients.

"Our technology can be applied in many different areas and we will continue to use our deep scientific knowledge to identify sector opportunities."

At 13533 GMT, shares in Directa Plus were up 0.68% at 74p.