The energy industry is interested in a brand new technology from a firm called Siluria Technologies in San Francisco that can convert natural gas into gasoline for about $1 per gallon. The United States is now producing natural gas at record levels due to the hydraulic fracturing process also known as "fracking."
The federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) supports the carefully regulated "fracking" process and Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 4 (SB4) into law which will provide the most stringent environmental controls regarding the process in the United States. Officials from the state Department of Conservation are expected to come to San Benito County to make a presentation to the public regarding the new law, SB4, prior to the November election.
From its press release: Siluria Technologies, a pioneer in the commercial production of fuels and chemicals made from clean and abundant natural gas, announced today the initial close of its Series D financing round. The round was led by Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV), the venture investment subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, the world’s leading fully integrated energy and chemical enterprise, and included additional investments by all of the major existing investors in Siluria. The total raise for this initial close of the Series D financing was $30 million.
“We are very pleased to welcome SAEV as a major investor in Siluria, and look forward to exploring opportunities to work together on the strategic front,” said Siluria CEO Ed Dineen. “We are excited to bring additional industry capabilities to our company and our board as we continue to progress towards commercializing our process,” said Siluria Board of Directors Chairman Karl Kurz.
Siluria has developed a catalytic process for transforming natural gas—the most abundant and widely available hydrocarbons on earth—into transportation fuels and commodity chemicals in an efficient, cost-effective, scalable manner using processes that can be seamlessly integrated into existing industry infrastructure. Siluria has created a growing portfolio of process configurations with applications in upstream, midstream gas processing, downstream chemicals production and refining operations.
Recently, Siluria announced a partnership with The Linde Group, a world leading gases and engineering company, to offer an integrated package combining Siluria’s technology with Linde’s separations and recovery systems for licensing to the petrochemical industry at existing ethylene plants or for new world scale ethylene plants.
With this initial Series D financing, Siluria has raised just under $100 million since its inception. Siluria is currently in discussions with additional strategic and financial investors to complete a total Series D financing of approximately $50 million.
For more information, visit www.siluria.com.