Holiday Blessings and New Beginnings
Written by Matthew McKean, CEO and co-founder of Frontieras North America (LinkedIn)
For many, the holidays are an opportunity to slow down, share time with family and give thanks for the blessings of the past year.
Personally, I feel blessed as I look forward to hosting family and friends for the holidays and stepping into the New Year with so much optimism and opportunity. Leading up to the holidays, I have taken stock of what Frontieras North America has accomplished and the impact we are ready to make in the energy market. This upcoming year is pivotal for Frontieras as we look to execute a public listing, break ground on the first FASForm plant and positively impact the production and delivery of energy in North America and across the globe.
As the CEO and co-founder of Frontieras and Frontieras North America, I have been blessed with the opportunity to both introduce and become the champion of our innovative clean technology, Solid Carbon Fractionation™. Over the last 12 years, co-founder Joe Witherspoon and I have taken Frontieras from a theoretical paper to now preparing to break ground on our first plant. Each year at this time, we identify our goals for the organization, and challenges that lie ahead of us while assessing the current energy market and the impact it will have on our success. It was during this planning last year that we made four energy predictions that ended up occurring in 2022:
1. Commodity Crisis: Supply side issues, Zero Carbon policies and the ongoing transition to a lower carbon economy have the oil and natural gas producers reluctant to spend money on new projects. This hesitation, combined with a number of outside factors (including inflation, supply-constrained physical markets, commodity-intensive infrastructure spending and rising production costs) accelerated a commodity crisis in 2022.
2. Spiking Energy Prices: Energy prices rose rapidly in the U.S. and abroad. Other parts of the world (India, Asia, Germany and the UK) recognized their energy shortfalls and ramped up coal production to meet the rising energy demands which outpaced the output of solar initiatives.
3. Populist uprising against "Carbon neutral”: People will not accept freezing to death and facing food shortages. With the failure of wind and solar to provide stable and low-cost energy, we witnessed the downturn of green-based momentum.
4. New Technologies: We anticipated major technological advancements would be made across specific parts of the energy sector, including hydrocarbons. As predicted by the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal played a large part in the world’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
These four predictions, shared in an early February 2022 blog, materialized over the course of the year at a rapid rate. These past twelve months, we have seen an acceleration of energy prices in large part because of a global shortage, caused by both micro and macro events. These events include Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, OPEC cutting oil production, and the ongoing pro-green policies that have defunded the innovation of the oil and gas industry. These events, coupled with the unprecedented “lock-down” of the world economy, predictably led to supply-chain crisis and ongoing shortages. Today, we are faced with increased inflation and skyrocketing energy prices across the globe.
I think it is safe to say 2022 was a milestone year for Frontieras. Specific highlights included:
Frontieras’ third-party engineering firm, JōB Industrial Services, Inc. identified the value of the technology and yields of Frontieras’ FASForm plant. The original report not only proved the technology but allowed Frontieras to identify different streams of revenue from the FASForm plant, as well as the ability to embrace a zero-waste strategy by repurposing many of the volatile elements, including Hydrogen. Specific highlights from FASForm findings included several competitive and environmental benefits, including economic viability, market impact, and positive environmental impact.
Frontieras made a significant announcement as it engaged with West Virginia’s Mason County to purchase the land of its first site. The plant is expected to process 7,500 tons of coal per day, or roughly 2.7 million tons annually. The site is ideally situated next to the Ohio river and has direct access to freight shipping with a railroad. The site is large enough to host the plant and auxiliary businesses that will benefit from the residuals (i.e. ammonia, hydrogen, sulfer, etc). The construction of the first plant will have a significant impact on the local economy of Mason County with more than 500 full-time employees.
On the financial front, Frontieras has made significant inroads with various institutional investors, private offices, the Department of Energy, and the onboarding of the Halter Financial Group to expediate the public listing of the company with a Form 10 listing.
Frontieras bolstered its executive team with the onboarding of Andrea Moran as Chief Commercial Officer. Andrea has been a longtime advocate of Frontieras and has brought a wealth of experience as she navigates the funding of Frontieras FASForm within the investment community and negotiates the off-take contracts with organizations across the globe.
Frontieras engineering completed FEL 1 and FEL 2, and is expected to complete FEL 3 in Q1 of 2023. Frontieras, in parallel with completing FEL 3, is also working on the execution stage which includes detailed engineering and covers the entire gamut of construction from grading the site to hauling off the energy yields when the site is operational.
These 2022 accomplishments have been many years in the making and represent Frontieras’ efforts to bring an innovative, clean technology to the energy market.
Thank you again to all the readers of this blog who have contributed and supported our efforts. This journey has been a blessing and we are looking to 2023 as a year Frontieras will help the United States to achieve energy independence.
To learn more about Frontieras North America and its patented energy solution or to invest in the company, please visit www.Frontieras.com.