In Mississippi, KiOR has signed a forestry-based feedstock supply agreement with Chevron and Weyerhaeuser’s JV Catchlight Energy following on to April’s offtake agreement for production from KiOR’s facility in Columbus. The offtake agreement is subject to satisfaction of product specification criteria and RIN certification of the products as cellulosic biofuels under the U.S. Renewable Fuel […]
In Texas, KiOR has finalized a “conditional” offtake agreement for its biocrude-based gasoline with Catchlight Energy, the 50-50 joint venture between subsidiaries of Chevron and forest products major Weyerhaeuser, making it the second deal of its kind following an earlier deal with Hunt Refining.
A team of researchers from Iowa State led by Robert Brown and supported by the DOE’s Biomass Technologies Office is aiming to demonstrate the liquefaction of forest biomass for hydrocarbon fuels, as a viable path to stable intermediates for hydrocarbon fuel blendstocks. In many ways, this project inherits work developed at Catchlight Ventures that at one […]
The US Department of Energy is supporting a project to demonstrate solvent liquefaction as viable path to stable intermediates for subsequent upgrading to fuel blendstocks. This is based on a technology originally developed in large part via Catchlight Energy and we profiled its revival at Iowa State right here, in “Chevron’s forgotten biofuels wonder-tech gets […]
Our story so far In 2011, KiOR raised $150 million in its June IPO, claiming that it was generating yields of 67 gallons per ton in its Demo unit operations. But it was miles short of that. In our previous installments, we have charted how KiOR moved from a promising early-stage technology to a public […]
You may recall that The Bloomberg investigative team of Ben Elgin & Peter Waldman in 2013 published an expose on Chevron claiming that the company had developed — then buried — a Catchlight Energy project that could profitably make renewable gasoline at $2.18 per gallon? Originally the venture was intended to build 17 plants by […]
Our story so far KiOR was hanging by a thread as the summer of 2010 commenced. In a few days, the first recorded visitors to Pasadena demo unit, representatives of the Mississippi Development Authority, were expecting to see the demonstration unit in action. The company was beginning to hurtle towards an IPO. But the fuel […]
Note. This is Part 2 of our series on the inside true story of KiOR. In part 1 of our series, here, we explored: the formation of BIOeCON and KiOR, the problem of too much oxygen and coke, the entry of Khosla Ventures, and the loss of a CEO. Also, “a recipe for technical failure”, disastrous pilot […]
Jacobs’ back and Ensyn’s got him. The complete story. Jeffrey Jacobs, who served as Vice President of Chevron Technology Ventures until his recent retirement from Chevron, was appointed CEO of Ensyn Corporation and elected to its Board of Directors. Jacobs was also appointed as a member of the Board of Directors of Envergent Technologies, Ensyn’s […]
Virent is in the business of replacing crude oil by applying clever chemistry to create the fuels and chemicals the world demands using a wide range of naturally-occurring, renewable resources. Virent’s patented technology features catalytic chemistry to convert plant-based sugars into a full range of products identical to those made from petroleum, including gasoline, diesel, […]
