Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that preaches the need to invest in green technologies and reduce global warming, has invested in a second company that seeks to produce more oil.
The firm has joined an Indian research group, TERI, and private equity investor GTI to invest $10 million in Houston’s GloriOil, a company boasting a new technology that helps oil companies get more oil out of existing wells.
This follow news in March that Kleiner invested in another oil exploration company Terralliance.
Both investments were made quietly, with no announcement. Kleiner has not yet responded to a request for comment made late yesterday.
Kleiner’s leading partner John Doerr has led a crusade to stop the damage caused by global warming caused by greenhouse emissions and has publicly broken down in tears over the issue. Investing in oil exploration, of course, makes it possible to drill oil more efficiently, and produce greenhouse emissions in even greater amounts, and stands in contradiction to the firm’s stated public mission. Explaining its first investment, in Terralliance, Kleiner made the somewhat shaky argument investments like this reduce waste associated with traditional drilling, and so are making a helpful contribution.
The company adds a mixture of microbes and nutrients into the ground that stimulates growth of the active agents in a shut-in area which generate oil. The company returns three weeks later to recoup the oil. It boasts that wells treated this way triples production.
The company was founded in 2005, and based on technology developed by the Energy and Resources Institute, a New Delhi, India research organization, which has studied oil recovery for a decade. It is also testing the technology with private companies in Texas.
The news follows a $12 million investment into another oil recovery company, DynaPump. Investors included DFJ Element, NGP Energy Technology Partners and existing investor CTTV Investments (Chevron’s investment arm), and it is the company’s third round.
Update: We’re told SiliconTap first mentioned the investment several days ago.
4 Comments
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10668844 said:
I believe, 100% that we need to find sustainable energy sources. I believe 100% that we already have the technology available in the form of solar, wind, geothermal and hydro/tidal.
That being said, the oil industry is not going to roll over and play dead anytime soon. A technology that enables the industry to extract more oil for already existing facilities is not a bad thing, in fact, I think it is a good investment.
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Ben Kuo said:
Matt - we uncovered this last week, as I’m sure you’re aware. I’m trying to attribute anything we pick up from you, appreciate the same consideration:
http://www.silicontap.com/kleiner_perkins_funds_oil_biotech_firm/s-0010223.html
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Matt Marshall said:
Hey Ben, sorry about that. Congrats. I’ve seen this in several places, and no one seems to site the source. It’s hard to tell because you don’t cite a source either. You weren’t the place I first read it.
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OilGasFutures.Com said:
“Exploration” is great and much needed –we like to focus directly on “Developmental” properties ie already proven properties. These types of properties can directly help our energy crunch and can also more directly profit those who invest in them—separately we also assist individuals in the futures markets which are a great way to speculate and hedge energy postions/investments—-also one hugely overlooked aspect of the “developmental” properties that we engage in are the tax-breaks that are unique to them— an Individual Investor can literally write-off 70% of their one time investment in the first year—this is a huge incentive the us govt is giving investors to help get us off foreign oil –this break has been called “the most advantageous single-year tax advantaged-investment in existence” by tax expert Jeffrey Schnepper of msn/cnn money—anyway these are great invetments that help the country—-it’s nice to see money going into excellent ideas like glorioil, terralliance and dynapump everything that can be done is needed –pk
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busy-preview.info » Now this world-old restlessness of the women has a sound and a tragic said:
[...] Kleiner Perkins invests in second oil exploration <b>company</b>, GloriOil [...]
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linkdump from 25 Jul 07 « that dismal science said:
[...] Jul 25, 2007 in IPOs, startups, links, venture capital Kleiner Perkins invests in second oil exploration company, GloriOil from VentureBeat [...]
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VentureBeat » VCs still investing in improving gasoline production, despite global warming said:
[...] Valley’s Kleiner Perkins, a well-known venture capital firm, has also backed oil/gasoline companies. Tagged co:Rive Technology, deal, inv:Advanced Technology Ventures, inv:charles river ventures [...]