EQTEC shares gained 1.4% to 0.4p in late morning trading on Monday after the company announced its selection of Petrofac as its front-end engineering (FEED) design contractor for its waste-to-energy project at Haverton Hill, Billingham.
EQTEC and Petrofac have worked together since 2021 on pre-FEED work, including a review by Petrofac of EQTEC’s technology, resulting in a proposal by Petrofac for provision of the FEED for the RDF-to-CHP facility.
The two companies have reportedly signed a letter of intent to formalise the agreement, and for potential EPC partner for development and delivery of the project.
“Petrofac has for decades been a leader in delivery of large-scale, complex projects in the oil & gas industry and now are one of the global EPCs moving most quickly to bring that expertise to new energy businesses,” said EQTEC COO Jeff Vander Linden.
“Our engagement with Petrofac over the past year or so has been interactive and focused, with a dedicated, joint team and open collaboration toward finalisation of the FEED proposal and heads of terms that will support work start and steady progress at Billingham.”
EQTEC announced it had secured all relevant permits through its wholly-owned project special purpose vehicle Haverton WTV Limited (Haverton) to build its refuse-derived fuel (RDF)-to-combined heat and power facility, which would transform 200,000 tonnes of RDF into as much as 25 MW of electricity for export to the national grid.
The operation also has the potential to generate up to 34 MW of thermal energy.
The firm commented it had secured the contract for a grid connection and was further pursuing discussions with neighbouring companies regarding the provision of private wire offtake.
Additionally, as the project is set to utilise less than 40% of the total land to be acquired, EQTEC said it was assessing alternative opportunities to maximise its use of the available property.
The current options under consideration include hydrogen production, battery storage and hydrogen refuelling.
EQTEC added its primary focus at the moment was to collaborate with neighbouring industrial companies and potential investors to raise finance and develop its technology to launch its facility.
The group also said it intended to enable the funding optionality and flexibility brought by the multi-technology approach by splitting Haverton into multiple special-purpose vehicles.
“We look forward to supporting the engineering of EQTEC’s Billingham project and to working with their team to de-risk the project leveraging our construction experience of complex process plants to ensure the design is efficiently constructible and operatable,” said Petrofac New Energy Services vice president Jon Carpenter.
“We are excited by the potential of the waste-to-value sector in the UK and are excited to be working with pioneers such as EQTEC in turning this potential into reality and delivering the energy transition in the process.”
