Glasspoint Solar Inc., a closely held producer of solar equipment used for enhanced oil recovery, received $53million from a group of investors led by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Oman’s largest sovereign wealth fund.
The funds will be used to accelerate the deployment of Glasspoint’s solar-steam generators in Oman, the Fremont, California-based company said today in a statement. Existing investors Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, Nth Power and Rockport Capital also contributed to the equity round.
Glasspoint’s systems concentrate sunlight on tubes to create steam that’s injected to help retrieve heavy crude oil. Generating that heat from the sun instead of liquefied natural gas reduces a drilling site’s gas consumption by as much as 80 percent — and it costs less than half as much.
About one-quarter of Oman’s natural gas supply is used for so-called enhanced oil recovery and using more sunlight allows it to save or sell those supplies, Geert van de Wouw, managing director of Shell Technology Ventures, said in a telephone interview.
“Being able to re-appropriate it for other industries is very important to Oman — as it is for us,” said van de Wouw, who is based in the Netherlands. “We’re not just a venture capital firm that tries to maximize a return on investment. That’s important, but, more importantly, we try to find opportunities to deploy these technologies.”
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