Arrakis Oil Recovery, LLC
Arrakis Oil Recovery, LLC (the Company”) has been formed to own and operate a process technology license for the recovery of bitumen from oil sands (tar sands) using patented and proprietary process technology. Imperial Petroleum, Inc. owns a 33.33% interest in Arrakis and is providing the management and operations of the Company.
The process technology utilizes a non-thermal, mechanical and chemical process in a closed-loop system to recover the available bitumen from oil sands. The sand recovered from the operation is 100% free of hydrocarbon residue. The chemical involved is non-toxic and biodegradable and does not release any volatile compounds during its operation. The system operates under a closed-loop with respect to processing chemicals and emissions and as a result has zero discharge, except for clean sand and the separated bitumen product. The product technology will work equally as well on either oil-wet (U.S. oil sands) or water-wet (Canadian oil sands) oil sand systems.
A recovery test was performed and witnessed by representatives from Imperial at the technology provider’s research plant in Houston, Texas using approximately 1 ton of material obtained from a pre-selected site for the installation of a pilot scale operation and was successful in demonstrating the applicability of the process technology to oil sand recovery.
The Company intends to install its initial operation at a pre-selected site containing several million tons of mined oil sands and expects to begin processing at 300 tons per day with rapid expansion to 2,400 tons per day in the first few months. The bitumen to be recovered will average approximately 8% of the material processed and will be sold for approximately $400/ton. Direct operating costs will be approximately $6.70 per barrel of bitumen recovered at processing rates of 2,400 tons per day.
