Verde Clean Fuels closed the $50 million equity investment by Cottonmouth Ventures, a subsidiary of Diamondback Energy. This investment features the purchase of 12.5 million shares of Verde’s Class A common stock by Cottonmouth at a purchase price of $4.00 per share. The investment represents the second investment by Cottonmouth in Verde over the past two years, for a total investment of $70 million, making Cottonmouth the second largest shareholder of Verde.
The investment proceeds are expected to be used to further develop and construct potential natural gas-to-gasoline production plants and for other general corporate purposes. The proposed plants to be jointly developed by Verde and Cottonmouth would produce fully refined gasoline utilizing Verde’s patented (STG+) process from associated natural gas feedstock supplied from Diamondback’s operations in the Permian Basin.
In connection with the funding, Verde expanded its Board of Directors from seven to eight members and appointed Johnny Dossey, as Cottonmouth’s director designee, to its Board of Directors. And Dossey currently serves as Vice President of Marketing at Diamondback and has been with Diamondback since 2018. Before Diamondback, Dossey served in marketing roles for Concho Resources from 2014 to 2018. And before Concho, Dossey served in various leadership and commercial roles for Western Refining, Montana Refining Company, and Calumet Specialty Products Partners and Holly Corporation (now HF Sinclair). Dossey received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management and a Master of Business Administration from Texas Tech University.
KEY QUOTES:
“This investment is consistent with our commitment to efficiency and sustainability in oil and gas operations. Verde’s technology provides an exciting opportunity to convert associated natural gas from our Permian Basin operations into gasoline, as well as an anticipated high value outlet for a volume of our natural gas with the added potential benefit of flare mitigation and production of a lower carbon fuel.”
- Johnny Dossey
“We are proud and excited to announce the closing of Cottonmouth’s second investment in Verde. Diamondback’s continued confidence in our team and our technology is instrumental as we continue advancing our plans to deploy our technology. In addition, we are pleased to welcome Johnny as a director to our Board of Directors. We look forward to having him as part of our team as we look to finalize engineering and design and shift focus toward constructing and operating commercial production plants.”
- Ernest Miller, CEO of Verde
