Quadrise tells shareholders it's doing its best to develop business

Quadrise Fuels International updated the market on its business development activities on Friday, following the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Freepoint Commodities, as announced on 18 July.

The AIM-traded company said it believed the memorandum would provide a “significant catalyst” to its business development activities across all business segments, in both existing and new geographic markets in the Americas and in Asia.

Following the signing of the MoU, Quadrise said it was now working with Freepoint to agree and prioritise an expanded list of specific target projects, with a focus on opportunities that would benefit from the synergy available from utilising Quadrises's ‘MSAR’ technology in conjunction with Freepoint's trading and investment activities, to create and develop sustainable markets for the production, supply and consumption of MSAR.

In addition, the Quadrise board said opportunities for Freepoint's specific expertise and knowledge of fuel and distillate markets to add further value to some of its current projects was already becoming apparent.

“We look forward to providing updates on the initiatives under the MoU in due course,” the company’s board said in its statement.

As it previously noted, Quadrise was continuing to develop a “broad spread” of potential opportunities in the power, marine, upstream, petrochemical and refinery refuelling markets.

It said itself and Cepsa were continuing to explore opportunities to use the installed facility at Cepsa for supply to the marine or power markets.

The company said it would also evaluate opportunities to accelerate the development of other projects by using the equipment currently installed at Cepsa.

There were also “significant” opportunities in the power market in the Americas, the Middle East - in addition to those in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - Africa and the Far East, with the potential to supply from Europe for some projects, Quadrise explained.

It said it would continue to address those either directly, or through its relationships with YTL-PowerSeraya, JGC and/or Freepoint, as appropriate.

The marine market was reportedly now exhibiting a “substantive change” with regards to the acceptance of exhaust gas cleaning, or ‘scrubbers’, with significant momentum said to be building, and large orders recently announced, on their implementation across all major segments including tankers, bulkers and container ships.

“This is being driven by increased concern over distillate fuel availability and compatibility potentially impacting operations; and increasing oil prices and a widening of the price spread between high and low sulphur fuels leading to material increases in fuel costs for shippers,” Quadrise explained.

“This environment further increases the economic benefits of MSAR® in combination with scrubbers further enabling the company to engage with shippers and engine manufacturers.”

Discussions were said to be progressing with Maersk relating to the royalty agreement in the context of recent market developments.

Additionally, feedback was being awaited from a client relating to the use of MSAR technology in the petrochemical market, which the board said would initially comprise a trial for a new residue application.

Quadrise said it was continuing to evaluate opportunities for MSAR to be used as part of a number of processing facility solutions to enable lower cost steam generation to improve the economics of crude oil production and export for a low sulphur heavy oil asset and, separately, to reduce on-site power generation costs in another upstream application.

“The previously outlined challenges faced in Saudi Arabia have required the company to re-evaluate how best to progress the substantial opportunities that it continues to believe exist in the KSA power generation market in the medium term.

“Information relating to the KSA's proposed new energy strategy and the proposed restructuring of the power sector is awaited and is now not expected to be available until early autumn 2018.”

The board added that, even with the “ambitious” targets for renewables that had been announced recently in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, liquid fuels would be a “major” fuel source for generating power and desalination in the KSA for many years given its growing energy demand.

As such, the implementation of MSAR in the interim period could save “many billions of dollars” as the KSA implemented its ambitious Vision 2030 plans.

“We have been working hard during 2018 to develop a broader platform for our MSAR technology across a larger number of projects,” said Quadrise executive chairman Mike Kirk.

“Whilst we still have some way to go to progress these to commercial contracts, there has been a real change in the marine market, driven by the forthcoming IMO 2020 regulations, that has fundamentally improved the economics for MSAR projects.

“Alongside this, adding to our existing relationships with YTL-PowerSeraya and JGC, our MoU with Freepoint will enable us to progress new projects and to potentially accelerate existing projects globally across a range of sectors.”