Our Team
JERREL BRANSON
Managing Director
Following graduation from Rice University, Jerrel was based in Southeast Asia working on oil/gas projects throughout the region, including early 3-D modeling of reservoirs in Thailand, People’s Republic of China and Indonesia. With partners, he purchased the oil production of the Philippines under which the group discovered the only Giant Oilfield in the region during the 1980’s. This base was used to expand the company’s operations to Belize and Ghana and with outside counsel the company was listed on the NASDAQ.
In the 1990’s Jerrel established a landfill gas processing company which grew into the largest landfill gas processing group in the world at the time of its sale in 1999. With his team, unique biogas processing techniques were developed, including the world’s first LNG from landfill gas in 1995. Included in the developments were the initial cross-border GHG Emission Reduction Credit trades from landfill gas resources. Corollary technologies were developed to capture and purify the carbon dioxide off-gas from landfill resources.
He has developed numerous technologies relating to environmental standards, including a patented process to covert animal wastes to biomethanol as well as a process to convert animal processing wastes to synthetic crude oil to limit CO2 emissions from waste lagoons. Recent patent filings are in the area of conversion of waste plastic to liquid fuels.
Current activities are focused on the development of engineered facilities for the capture and storage of anthropogenic carbon dioxides from various industrial host resources.
KYLE SIMPSON
Director
Kyle has decades of experience working in government and the energy industry on energy and environmental policy, laws, and regulations, and developing projects. Mitigating climate change, education, community engagement and increasing value are forefront in his work on clean energy system integration and project development. Kyle has managed his own companies, lead the energy and environment consulting practice in several law and policy firms, and held executive positions in large energy and construction companies. While serving at the U.S. Department of Energy as Senior Advisor to the Secretary and Associate Deputy Secretary for Energy Programs, Kyle developed and managed domestic and international energy policy. He was responsible for the energy R&D programs for natural gas, renewable energy, nuclear energy, and energy efficiency and oversaw the management of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the power marketing administrations. He has helped to create and worked on major U.S. and international environmental and energy initiatives to increase resource and product value, minimize the environmental impact of energy production and use, integrate systems for the use of renewable and natural gas resources and technologies, and make the production, delivery, and use of energy more efficient. Kyle teaches energy policy at the Michael F. Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma and serves on the Advisory Board of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.
With years of work in the fields of energy, environment, politics, and project development with corporations; federal, state, and local governments; philanthropic organizations; and research and development companies, Kyle offers insight from multiple vantage points and understands challenges and opportunities from diverse perspectives. He works to connect public policy and business realities to further environmental, social and governance (ESG) responsibility while advancing business objectives.
Most of Kyle’s current activities are associated with the ongoing transition to decarbonized energy and chemical systems, including: development of "green" and "blue" energy and chemical production projects; capturing and bringing anthropogenic CO2 to secure geological storage sites and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) fields for use as a tertiary injectant and permanent storage; developing and implementing workable incentives for carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS); developing projects with electrolysis and production processes with carbon capture to manufacture hydrogen, ammonia and other chemicals; net-zero emission natural gas production and transportation; net-zero liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities; climate-friendly electric power generating systems; using distributed ledger technology for GHG emissions identification, verification, monetization and trading; and, transitioning large energy, social and economic systems to a decarbonized future.