ENVIA Energy venture breaks ground on new GTL plant in Oklahoma City

ENVIA Energy today held the groundbreaking ceremony for its first gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant, located adjacent to Waste Management’s East Oak landfill site in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

ENVIA Energy has entered into the main contracts for the project, procurement of all major equipment has been completed and fabrication of the Fischer-Tropsch reactors and plant modules are underway. Commercial operation is expected in the first half of 2016. 

ENVIA Energy is a JV between Waste Management, NRG Energy, Ventech Engineers and Velocys, formed in March 2014 to develop a series of GTL plants in the US and other select geographies to produce renewable, ultra-clean fuels and chemicals from a combination of landfill gas and natural gas. 

Fuels produced by the plant will deliver significant lifecycle greenhouse gas reductions over conventionally-produced fuels, according to project officials.

“I predict that in 10 years we will look back at ENVIA Energy’s Oklahoma City project and regard it as one of the first of the new paradigm of distributed production of fuels and chemicals that will have revolutionized the industry,” said Roy Lipski, CEO of Velocys. "This project is a landmark for GTL and its application to landfill gas on a commercial basis."

The ENVIA Energy Oklahoma City project will provide a commercial reference plant for the use of Velocys’ technology and Ventech’s modularization with a combination of landfill gas/natural gas as feedstock and will deploy a number of Velocys’ full scale Fischer-Tropsch reactors. 

The project will utilize Waste Management’s pioneering landfill gas recovery and clean-up techniques and will benefit from NRG Energy’s significant experience in energy project development, according to JV representatives.

This project is expected to create 13 full-time jobs and 120-150 on-site positions during construction. 

ENVIA Energy says it has identified candidate sites for possible future plants and is evaluating those and other opportunities utilizing technical and commercial work completed to date as a foundation for future project development.

“It gives me great pleasure to see Ventech’s expertise in the modular construction of refineries to be applied to the new area of smaller-scale GTL plants and to see the modules for this first plant take shape in our fabrication facility,” said Kevin Stanley, CEO of Ventech.