Once isolated, renewable energy and fossil fuel companies and leaders are collaborating to build a reliable and sustainable future.

The impact of the oil and gas industry on North Texas cannot be overstated. In addition to multinational corporations and game-changing innovations, it has created dozens of millionaires and several billionaires who have funded the growth of the region as well as the arts and education infrastructure.

From the black gold of the gushing era to the natural gas boom and hydraulic fracturing of the Barnett Shale, the industry has undergone a major transformation in the last century or so. Now, another major change is underway: from strictly relying on fossil energy and consumption patterns to include solar and wind energy and other renewable energy sources.

What we see is an industry driven by interdisciplinary friendship and disruptive innovation. In recognition of this shift, D CEO revised its previous oil and gas awards to include renewable energy in our new energy awards. In this special report, read some of the leading key players, as well as industry journalist Jennifer Warren's introduction to Pioneer Natural Resources Corporation Heritage Award winner Scott Sheffield.

Wall Street and consumers demand that companies across the country assume their influence by providing environmental, social, and governance transparency. Closer to home, the February 2021 winter storm Uri revealed surprising weaknesses in the Texas energy grid, highlighting the need for new, more reliable energy sources.

In response, fossil fuel companies are stepping up to build the energy industry of the future—an industry marked by interdisciplinary friendship and disruptive innovation. In the D CEO’s 2021 Energy Awards, seven finalists in the category of excellence, innovation and sustainability emphasized North Texas’s leading role in this transition.

Highlighted in this feature, they focus on everything from bacterial microbes and cannabis crops to carbon capture and clean backup power generation.

Engineer Mark Bouldin moved to the United States from Hamburg in 1988 and began a more than 30-year career in the energy industry centered on lubricants and bitumen, and worked with major players such as Shell, Sunoco, and Koch Industries.

At Safety Kleen, Bouldin leads the largest waste oil collector and re-refiner as the president of high-performance products. He then established the US business of GFL Environmental, a liquid waste collection company, through acquisitions, and eventually listed the company. 

In March of this year, Bouldin brought his expertise in the field of recycled oil to TopSail Energy as CEO. "I saw a great opportunity to see how we can create something unique for Texas," said Bouldin, who changed the company's name to Blue Tide Environmental.

"We don't think of ourselves as an energy company. We think of ourselves as recyclers," he said.

He also transformed a marine fuel refinery in Cedar Bayou to process used oil and created the first large-scale refining facility in Texas to process used oil and convert it into high-quality engine oil. The vision of the factory.

"Our goal is to see if we can use this recycling to further reduce the carbon intensity of what we are doing," Bouldin said.

When the construction of the oil refinery in the Cedar Bayou is completed, Blue Tide will purchase used oil from the collection truck, refine it, and then sell it to dealers as the basis for engine oil. When the plant is fully up and running, it will move 4,000 barrels per day—approximately 168,000 gallons. Within three years, Bouldin hopes to expand to the East Coast, and North Texas will play an important role in his company's future.

"Dallas is now the first or second generator of used oil in the state, and is likely to be the first generator," Bouldin said.

In 2013, after working in the oil and gas industry for nine years, former lawyer Jonathan Grammer (Jonathan Grammer) started experimenting with carbon capture when a client asked him how to use it in a narrow Texas reservoir The captured carbon dioxide is harvested three times. Before oil prices fell, Grammer spent two years accumulating knowledge and data, and the project was shelved.

"But the science is there," Grammer said.

After Winter Storm Uri hit Texas in February 2021, the legislative priority shifted from using clean energy to ensuring a reliable power supply. Grammer knew that the industry needed a way to make coal and natural gas viable-which meant capturing carbon dioxide.

"I know that carbon capture will be the next big thing," he said.

"We cannot put coal, oil, natural gas and fossil fuels on the cutting board and let them become scapegoats."

By the spring of 2021, Grammer has assembled a team of five experts in the fields of oil and gas, law, technology, and reservoir engineering to form US Carbon Capture Solutions, a company that works with emitters to capture carbon dioxide and transport it to oil The Tibetan consulting company was used for the third recovery.

Leading companies such as Denbury Resources and Kinder Morgan use naturally-occurring carbon dioxide to improve oil recovery, and Grammer is shifting this process to industrial carbon dioxide.

"Before, it was too expensive," he said. "We now have incredible investment credits and tax credits that have changed the financial landscape."

These credits forced some of Grammer's clients to change their positions from his initial research and forced new players to join. 

With cost no longer an obstacle, Grammer's goal is to use amine solvents to purify low-purity industrial carbon dioxide from emission sources such as power plants.

"In some cases, there will be almost a CO2 affecting process," he said. "In this process, we not only have to remove carbon dioxide, but also re-enrich it-improve the purity level-before we can pass The pipeline leads it into the transmission pipeline."

He hopes to start ready projects in the narrow strip and the Midwest next year.

He said: "We may help capture 4 to 5 million tons of carbon dioxide in the middle of 2022."

"This is not just a myth or theory; we can actually do this: you can actually continue to use coal and natural gas as fuel sources, and you can lower the climate change numbers," Grammer said.

Bill Lantz began his career as a mud engineer before joining his father's small company, which applied natural microorganisms to a variety of environments, including oil fields. When his father died, Lantz founded JGL Solutions based on Prosper, focusing on the use of microbial bacteria in the energy sector as a substitute for chemical scale inhibitors and corrosion inhibitors, emulsifiers and fungicides. This is an ancient solution; research shows that microorganisms have been around for more than 3.7 billion years.

"No matter where you apply the microorganisms, even if you accidentally spill them, they are good for the environment, not harmful-the exact opposite of chemicals," Lantz said.

He assesses the level of chemicals in wells, water injection and brine treatment systems, and removes corrosive compounds. Then, his team injected naturally occurring microbial bacteria into the system to create unique colonies for each part.

"We mix [microbial chains] according to the situation," Lanz said.

Because microorganisms can multiply by themselves, no pumps or barrels are needed to control the concentration, so the maintenance cost is lower and the risk of chemical leakage is eliminated. JGL will soon open a laboratory in DFW, hoping to get in touch with a new company that performs hydraulic fracturing near the Barnett Shale.

"It's just that the big companies have overcome the fear of trying [microbes] in fracturing," Lantz said.

He is also involved in the field of soil remediation, using microorganisms instead of hydrogen peroxide and other compounds to clean up chemicals and oil spills.

Lantz said: "We found that we are much better than any other company in terms of speed," Lantz added. Unlike chemicals, microbes will continue to clean the soil until the pollutants are completely gone-far exceeding the level required by the state. .

He recently launched a soil remediation pilot program with a major oil industry participant in West Texas, and hopes that the five sites of the program will provide exposure and credibility. Lantz also conducted this through his company’s podcast. Work.

"This is just another way to educate people, and this is what needs to happen," Lantz said.

Matt Vining launched Navigator Solutions in 2012 as a midstream crude oil pipeline in West Texas. He sold the company in 2017 and acquired another crude oil pipeline business; then, in 2021, he established Navigator CO2 Ventures, a carbon capture company.

"When we look at how this industry will develop and when we hope to develop, our goal is to stay ahead," Vining said of his recent project focused on isolating the risks of high-purity carbon, gas dioxide .

Vining plans to build an industrial carbon capture pipeline system spanning 1,200 miles in five Midwestern states. The system will capture carbon dioxide emitted by 20 to 30 ethanol and fertilizer plants, pressurize the gas into a gel, and then transport it to the Mount Simon sandstone formation in northern Illinois, where it will be injected into the ground to reduce emissions. Initially, Vining said that the system would move 10 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.

"From a domestic perspective, this will be the largest system," Weining said.

Construction will begin in 2023, and the pipeline is expected to be completed and operational in 2025. Vining is currently negotiating with multiple parties to find ways to use pure carbon dioxide as a refrigerant or coolant, such as data center companies, meat processing plants, and bottling plants.

"It will take us a few years to refine the scope of these opportunities," Weining said. "This is the first time in history that it can be easily accessed on a relevant and necessary scale."

John Paul Merritt, the CEO of Pony Oil, did a lot of introspection when he was young after he had achieved great success in the oil and gas industry.

"I always try to figure out'what is my reason?'" he said.

Seeing the similarities between energy and emerging cannabis commodities, he used the team's expertise in oil and gas to build a business centered on cannabis opportunities. When he learned that a company used Big Ag equipment and methods to grow corn and cotton to grow hemp crops—usually picked by hand—he bought it.

Since then, he has focused the company, Delta Agriculture, on the use of hemp grains and fiber as a substitute for paper, plastic and soy in consumer products and animal feed to establish a sustainable supply chain. The business is now growing and processing 10,000 acres of hemp on farms and facilities in Colorado, Kentucky, and West Texas.

Merritt is negotiating with a pet food manufacturer to use hemp as a soy substitute in the company's products.

"The nutritional content of [marijuana] currently exceeds anything they have," Merritt said.

He said that Fortune 500 companies are heating up for a crop that was legalized in 2018, and it has only recently become an option for establishing a sustainable supply chain.

"This is a fairly new crop, but it is a miracle crop," he said.

Delta Agriculture also provides 70% of the biomass required for each CBD product on the market, and is eager to become an important player in the bioplastics market. It is estimated that this segment will account for 40% of the entire plastics market by 2040. %.

But perhaps the area that excites Merritt most is what the cannabis plant does before harvest.

"Most people don't know that our crops can absorb about 10 tons of carbon dioxide from the air per acre," he said.

Merritt is building a carbon dioxide storage alliance to leverage his relationships with Fortune 500 companies in the oil and gas industry and other industries. Their common goal is to plant the nation's largest carbon dioxide storage project in western Texas, and to reach 1 million acres of cannabis cultivation by 2026.

"This will create thousands of jobs that are not affected by fluctuations in oil and gas political commodities," Merritt said.

He said he has met with Governor Greg Abbott twice, hoping to make West Texas the center of the cannabis industry and to provide impetus for alliances and quarantine programs.

"On a per acre basis, we are almost there, but in the next year or two, there will be more cannabis grown in West Texas than anywhere else in the world," he said.

When Erich Sanchak was recruited to join Austin-based data center company Digital Realty in 2004, he knew that sustainability was the top priority of founder and CEO William Stein.

For each of the company’s 291 data centers worldwide, including 22 in North Texas, Digital Realty is committed to ensuring efficient cooling—eliminating water in new facilities and directing cold outside air more directly machine. The company also uses renewable energy as much as possible to power the center. "We are not trying to limit our views on all this," Sanchak said.

Last year, Digital Realty and Citi signed a 7.5-year renewable energy credit agreement to provide 30% of the electricity required by its Dallas facility through renewable energy. Now, the company is working hard to continue to improve the efficiency of cooling, power usage, and backup power.

"We are working with our supply chain to study how to develop things that use natural gas, fuel cells or such activities on a global scale to provide cleaner backup power generation," Sanchack said.

He is also relocating his sustainability, supply chain, and cybersecurity teams to Dallas-there are approximately 200 employees.

"Our environmental management team will be highly concentrated here," he said.

Scott Rollseth joined the oil and gas giant Hunt Energy at the beginning of the millennium. In 2004, he helped create the LNG pipeline in South America, which cools the natural gas into a liquid, and then transports it to markets in Europe, Asia, and Mexico for heating, cooking, transportation, etc.

"About 700 million cubic feet are sold there every day," Rolseth said.

In 2005, he began to lead the company's sustainability efforts; 14 years later, he was appointed Vice President of Facilities, Engineering, Sustainability and Supply Chain.

"In the next year or two, there will be more cannabis grown in West Texas than anywhere else in the world."

For a long time, privatization has given Hunter the flexibility to focus on environmental issues, and shareholder pressure has often forced public entities to abandon these issues.

The Dallas-based company was the first to implement IFC’s performance standards and still handles each project with a unique plan to understand and protect the local society, history, and species of a region.

It modified past pipeline development and construction to accommodate archaeological research, documented the ethnobotany of the Canadian Arctic, and used satellite technology to track non-contact indigenous tribes so as not to interfere with their protected survival.

Rawls' team also worked with the National Geographic Society and the Smithsonian Institution to prioritize biodiversity, conservation, and conservation in the Peru project around Hunter.

"We even discovered rare species that were previously unknown," he said.

Now, Rolseth's team is leading the private company to achieve a large-scale transition to transparency-although it is not subject to shareholder or Wall Street requirements.

Hunt released its first ESG report in September, and has been counting its carbon dioxide assets, reducing its carbon footprint, improving efficiency, and so on.

"We are also considering the creation of zero-emission facilities-modular facilities can not only reduce the carbon footprint, but also reduce the physical footprint, and can be reused and redeployed in a more efficient way," Rolseth said. 

In addition, the company has opted not to use gas combustion when possible, which is a process of burning unwanted by-product gases in the open air.

"Anything that is naturally ventilated, we will cooperate and seal it," Rolseth said.

Hunt then sells the captured natural gas to a natural gas collection company, even if it is at a net loss. Hunter even began to diversify its investment portfolio, hoping to transform into an energy supplier rather than an oil company.

"We are no longer just an oil company," Rolseth said. "We are moving to cleaner fuels, recognizing that the energy matrix is ​​changing and it is not necessarily up to us to decide who needs energy and from what source-it depends on the consumer."

Tom Long and Mackie McCrea, Energy Transfer (W) J. Patrick Barley, Silver Creek Midstream (F) Alaina Brooks, EnLink Midstream (F)

Jordan Jayson, American Energy Development Corporation (W) Chris Carter, NGP Energy Capital (F) Travis Stice, Diamondback Energy (F)

Chad Willis, Istick Capital Management (F)

John Billingsley Jr., Tri Global Energy (W) Jason Allen, Leeward Renewable Energy (F) Melissa Miller, Able Grid Energy Solutions (F) Clark Smith, Buckeye Partners (F)

Hunt Oil Co., represented by Scott Rolseth (W) Mark Bouldin, Blue Tide Environmental (F) Jonathan Grammer, US Carbon Capture Solutions (F) Bill Lantz, JGL Solutions (F) John Paul Merritt, Delta Agriculture (F) Erich Sanchack , Digital Realty (F) Matt Vining, Navigator CO2 Ventures (F)

Joseph DeWoody, Valor Mineral Management (W) Le'Ann Callihan, NAPE Expo (F) Joe McKie, Alamo Pressure Pumping (F)

Matt Attaway, Align Midstream Partners (W) Kyle Miller, Silver Hill Energy Partners (F)

Tailwater Capital acquired NorTex Midstream Partners (W) Hunt Perovskite Technologies merged with 1366 Technologies (F) Metamaterial merged with Torchlight Energy Resources (F) Pioneer Natural Resources acquired DoublePoint Energy (F)

Pearl Energy Investments, led by Billy Quinn (W) Tailwater Capital, led by Jason Downie and Edward Herring (F)

Will McDonald, TenOaks Energy Advisors (W) Drew Winston, Tailwater Capital (F)