STWA Target Markets
STWA has separated its market into specific groups to be addressed with slightly different strategies. The three markets within the petroleum industry are Upstream Producers, Midstream Transporters, and Downstream Refiners. STWA seeks to pursue the first two of the three segments, since we believe such segments would benefit the most from our AOT technology.
Upstream Producers.
Upstream Producers are arguably the most motivated groups within the petroleum industry because they have the most to gain from additional flow throughput capacity and also experience the most problems due to high viscosity crude oil, especially in the Winter months.
This group, also known as the “Wildcatter” group are the most open to new technology, typically have the fewest barriers to entry, and tend to benefit financially the most from every additional barrel of their crude oil that they are able to transport. Upstream producers physically move the most volume of product and make the most money of the three segments for every barrel of crude transport capacity. They are the midstream transporter group’s customer and are the group that engages the transporter group in long-term contractual shipping obligations (tariff-based transportation contracts) to move product from their fields to the refiners and markets downstream.
Producers make the spot market price for every barrel delivered to refinery, minus the transport costs, tariffs, and marketing discounts associated with bringing the product to market. A rough rule of thumb for this market is that the further away they are from the refinery, the higher the transport costs to deliver the product. STWA’s AOT is of interest to upstream producers. This group would benefit from our AOT technology by unlocking chokepoints from their field to the transmission line loading terminals due to viscosity constraints. In addition, this group would also benefit from their midstream transporters implementing our AOT 2.0 transmission-line series by its ability to increase the overall flow capacity of the pipelines transporting the product from the loading terminals to market.
According to numerous market research groups, the upstream producers are currently massively choked in the central United States because the pipelines were designed to handle the recoverable capacity of crude oil prior to the advent of the Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques rapidly being put in place throughout the USA.
Midstream Transporters
Midstream transporters transport the greatest volume of crude oil throughout the 400,000 miles of crude oil pipelines around the world (160,000+ miles of crude pipelines are in the USA alone). We view them as a secondary market due to their tendency to be slower-moving and more conservative than their upstream counterparts, as they are one of the highest-regulated industry segments in the world.
In general, a pipeline transport operators’ business model is to charge a tariff to transport each barrel of oil through their pipeline. (The model is similar in business description to that of a toll-road, bridge or ferry service.) They are of interest for our AOT technology transmission-line series application in that the AOT viscosity reduction technology holds direct benefits to the midstream operators via increased flow rate capacities, reduced [BTU] per ton-mile and large “Green Effort” public perception value.
The AOT Midstream’s product value to this market segment is derived from the technology’s ability to reduce the friction loss per mile of the crude oil as it passes through the hundreds, and sometimes thousands of miles of pipeline from the upstream producers, en route to the downstream refineries.
Midstream Gathering Transporters
A subset of the midstream transporters sector is the gathering line operators. This group is sometimes a part of the upstream producers’ operations, or part of the midstream transporter’s operations. It is classified in this discussion in the latter category. These pipelines are the regional transportation lines that connect the upstream oilfields’ gathering lines to the midstream long distance transporters’ main trunk lines. They are typically relatively short distance pipelines (20-100mi) and have diameters between 6” and 12”.
Downstream Refineries
The third market category of the industry that can potentially benefit from our new viscosity reduction technology is the downstream refineries sector. The benefits of the new viscosity reduction technology to this sector would be passed through from advantages realized in the up and midstream sectors. We believe the advantages posed with the new technology hold potential for the downstream market sector in the potential for reduced reliance on chemical based flow assurance additives, reduced friction thermal build on heavily turbulent pipelines both leading to reduced Reid Vapor Pressures and subsequent evaporation mitigation practices and hardware requirements as mandated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
