Can We Help Make Sour Crude Sweet?

Good morning!

Nicholas and I had a blast last week on Sully Sullivan’s Big Biz Show…

I got to co-host the entire hour, and we interviewed Nicholas — click here to see show highlights…

Mexico’s Potential

Out of the blue, Sully asked Nicholas about Mexico’s recent decision to allow foreign oil companies to develop its oil resources.

That’s when things got interesting! Click here to watch just that bit.

Nicholas said, in part,

They have a big problem down there — they have a lot of oil, unfortunately a lot of the oil is sour — so you have a sour oil situation, especially in the Yucatan. We feel we can start helping in that area and there’s some advances we’re doing to assist in sweetening the oil. But these contracts that are going to be coming up are HUGE, they are absolutely huge. I think Mexico will rival Saudi Arabia in terms of commercial oil.

Well, resolving the sour oil problem is a big deal for Mexico.

The world wants sweet crude.

Here’s why:

Sour crude oil will have greater than 0.5% sulfur and some of this will be in the form of hydrogen sulfide.

Sweet crude, which has less than 0.5% sulfur, is easier to refine and safer to extract and transport than sour crude. Because sulfur is corrosive, light crude also causes less damage to refineries and thus results in lower maintenance costs over time. Due to all these factors, sweet crude commands up to a $15 dollar premium per barrel over sour. (petroleum.co.uk)

$15 a barrel — that is a massive difference.

Can our technology really help?

It’s early to tell, but we think so.

Electro Water Separation™ is already proven to be effective in removing organic contaminants. Since most of the sulfur in sour crude is actually bonded to carbon atoms, we might be able to help remove both this carbon, and neutralize the hydrogen sulfide too.

Even if we just neutralize the hydrogen sulfide, that is still a big deal.

This is something that deserves testing; and we are in discussions with the “right” parties to do exactly that.

If our technology does prove out, it would extend our licensing value well beyond cleaning the water into… improving crude.

Exciting times indeed.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Riggs and Nicholas and Team

Riggs Eckelberry
President & CEO
OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL)

PS: Congratulations to the Ennesys team for winning the “Coup de Coeur” (Love at First Sight) Award at PwC’s Accelerator’s Fourth “Local to Global” Expo, held in Luxembourg on 24 October!