TomCo Energy creates Utah-based subsidiary

Oil shale explorer TomCo Energy has created a new Utah-based subsidiary company called TurboShale to develop and commercialise new technologies for processing oil shale.

TurboShale's executive and technology will comprise of Ray Kasevich and Jeb Rong from Massachusetts-based JR Technologies and Graeme Hossie from UK-based Venture Development Partners.

The three companies have signed a letter of intent for commercial terms of their collaboration and a final co-operative framework deal will be agreed soon.

The collaboration was in response from to delays at the Seep Rodge site, which the company’s technology partner RedLeaf Resources had complted a preliminary front end engineering design study.

TomCo said that while the capsule costs were in-line with expectations, the Seep Ridge processing plant costs were higher than originally budgeted, resulting in the cost per barrel coming in at the higher end of expectations, and, RedLeaf's joint venture partner and shareholder, TOTAL E&P USA Oil Shale said it was not prepared to move forward with the early production system capsule (EPS).

The company had to re-evaluate its future strategy for its Holliday Block oil shale project and seek alternative technological solutions and so it was led to the collaboration.

JR Technologies agreed to join TurboShale and assign its patent US7891421B method and apparatus for in-situ radiofrequency heating , and its patent application US2015/035433A1 subsurface multiple antenna radiation technology.

JR Technologies will supervise all the radiofrequency laboratory work, and any subsurface field work for TurboShale.

TomCo chief executive Chris Brown said: "We believe we have found a collection of technologies that can be competitive at current oil prices and address the problems of producing shale oil from kerogen.

“While we continue to monitor the progress at RedLeaf, TurboShale allows TomCo to have greater control of its future development plans. There are estimated to be 3trn barrels of oil in the Green River Formation in the US, and TomCo Energy has 126m of these barrels in JORC measured category at the Holliday block alone, so the prize for commercialising oil shale production is huge."

Shares in TomCo Energy were up 17.53% to 0.999p 0855 BST.