Cowboy Clean Fuels LLC, a Denver-based clean energy startup with a carbon sequestration operation under construction in the heartland of Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, has received a $13 million round of venture capital money from a former Texas oilman and his investment group.
The company has now secured nearly $28 million in venture capital funding and matching grant money from the state of Wyoming, CEO Ryan Waddingon told Cowboy State Daily.
The latest round of investment is needed for the commercial launch of Cowboy Clean Fuels’ technology, licensed from the University of Wyoming’s Center for Biogenic Natural Gas Research, which will produce renewable natural gas from agricultural byproducts at commercial levels.
The ag byproducts come from the sugar beet industry, Waddington said.
Commercial operation is expected to begin in the final three months of the year.
In January, the company said that it was working on a plant located about 30 miles southwest of Gillette with $7.8 million in matching money from the Wyoming Energy Authority.
WEA regularly invests in energy projects throughout Wyoming with a requirement for matching money from federal, state and private sources. The matching funds program is aimed at spurring innovation and bring more energy development to Wyoming.
Along with Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a designee from Gordon’s office and the top executives from the WEA, Department of Workforce Services, Wyoming Business Council and University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources have a say on which projects get funded.
On Monday, Cowboy Clean Fuels disclosed the $13 million in funding from an investment group led by Houston-based Machan Investments, the family wealth office of former energy executive Dan Dinges.
Big Oil Investor
Dinges is the main investor, though there are several other anonymous big-name oil and natural gas executives who have tossed in their financial support to the innovative project, Waddingon said.
Dinges is a former executive for Noble Energy, and previously was the chairman, president and CEO of Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.
In late 2021, Cabot completed its $17 billion merger with Cimarex Energy, forming a new company called Coterra Energy, where Dinges is on the board of directors.
Houston-based Coterra is a hydrocarbon exploration company focused in the Permian Basin in the southwestern United States, the Marcellus Shale region in Appalachia and New York and the Anadarko Basin in western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.
Cowboy Clean Fuels is somewhat of a departure for Dinges.
The company was founded in 2020 and taps into coalbed methane wells in the Powder River Basin to generate biogas from the sugar beets.
The sugar beets are bought in the Wyoming region and are converted into carbon dioxide and renewable methane along with the help of deep geologic coal formations.
The company’s first commercial project in Wyoming has been given the technical name of “Triangle Unite Renewable Energy and Carbon Capture and Storage Project,” or TRECCS for short.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
