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Hunter,

As per our conversation yesterday, below is a short description of the opportunity that we are looking at for the Delaware City Refinery. I’m still waiting on call in information for the 1pm est call.

Best,

Avi


The existing gasification plant at the Delaware City refinery uses petroleum coke generated by the refinery to produce syngas that fuels a power plant (cogen). The plant was completed in 2000 and replaced coke-fired boilers that were among the worst polluters on the East Coast. The new cogen facility produced all of the refinery steam need and sold power to the PJM power network. The plant was shutdown recently after operating for more than ten years; coinciding with the shutdown of the refinery's coker. The gasification plant operated quite well for several of those years, and apparently not as well for others. This is not uncommon: gasification includes operating aspects not common to other processes and requires dedicated training and a learning curve. This is difficult in a plant that changed ownership – and operating staffs - at least three times in that ten year period.


Our plan forward would be to acquire the existing gasification plant – the gasification plant, the air separation unit that feeds oxygen to the gasifiers and nitrogen to the turbines, and the two-turbine cogen plant. The cogen plant could be divested to a power project developer simultaneously or after our purchase. We would likely fold the existing two-train gasification unit into one operating train, which would free up coke feed and gas cleanup capacity for a GPE Bluegas demonstration unit. We would operate the existing gasification train while we were fund raising for, designing, and constructing, our demo unit, providing cash flow for our company. Product gas would from both units would be sold to the cogen plant owner/operator.


The plan is not without challenges, for example, the sulfur recovery unit and most of the treatment of both intake and effluent water is shared with the refinery. Arrangements to share or plans to construct - and permit - these key plant pieces would have to be made to make the project successful.