Nevada's Only Refinery Just Got a Jet-Fuel Makeover Plan
WOODS CROSS, Utah, June 02, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Energy Metal News News Commentary — The U.S. refining map is getting smaller. West Coast capacity has been shrinking as older plants close, the major refiners spent the first quarter of 2026 emphasizing discipline over expansion, and the Trump administration has used Defense Production Act determinations to flag domestic refining as a strategic priority. Into that tightening backdrop, Sky Quarry Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYQ) — owner of the only operating refinery in the State of Nevada — has just signed an agreement aimed at turning that refinery toward one of the fastest-repricing corners of the fuel market: sustainable aviation fuel.
It is an ambitious pivot for a micro-cap, and one that lands against a difficult operating quarter the company is still working through. But the strategic logic is clear: a small, fully permitted refinery in a supply-short Western market, paired with low-carbon-fuel partners and a waste-to-oil feedstock story, is exactly the kind of asset that becomes more valuable as conventional capacity disappears and policy tilts toward domestic, lower-carbon production.
See how the SAF pivot and the Foreland refinery fit together — view the full Sky Quarry briefing here.
The MOU and what it opens up
In a May 7, 2026 announcement, Sky Quarry executed a non-binding, multi-party Memorandum of Understanding with Southern Energy Renewables Inc. — a U.S. developer of carbon-negative fuels and large-scale biomass-to-SAF platforms — and DevvStream Corp., a carbon-management and environmental-markets company. The MOU carries an initial three-year term and establishes a collaboration focused on fuel innovation, refinery integration, and low-carbon fuel development, spanning recycled hydrocarbons, specialty fuels, and sustainable aviation fuel.
The practical aim is to create a pilot-scale validation pathway for SAF and specialty fuels at the company's PR Spring development in Utah, alongside potential technology upgrades at the Foreland Refinery in Nevada that could allow it to produce on-spec aviation fuels. The arrangement is also designed to give Sky Quarry access to development expertise across front-end engineering, pilot validation, and commercialization, plus exposure to carbon programs, environmental-attribute markets, and project-financing frameworks it would struggle to assemble on its own.
For the company, the appeal is leverage on assets it already owns. CEO Marcus Laun framed the goal as evolving the Foreland Refinery "into a next-generation fuel production hub." The MOU is non-binding outside of customary provisions, so it is a framework rather than a contract — but it points the refinery and the PR Spring resource at a market that is repricing quickly, and it does so without Sky Quarry having to fund the entire development pathway itself.
The assets behind the pivot
Sky Quarry is an integrated energy and resource-recovery company built around two core assets. The first is the Foreland Refinery in Railroad Valley, Nevada — operated through its wholly owned subsidiary Foreland Refining Corporation — which the company describes as the only operating refinery in the state, with permitted capacity of roughly 5,000 barrels per day producing diesel, vacuum gas oil, naphtha, and liquid paving asphalt for Western U.S. markets. In a region where refining capacity is scarce and shrinking, an in-state, permitted facility carries strategic value beyond its size.
The second asset is the PR Spring development in Utah, where the company holds bitumen leases over roughly 5,930 acres and is advancing its proprietary ECOSolv process — a closed-loop, solvent-based technology designed to recover oil from oil-saturated sands and other oil-bearing solids, including waste asphalt shingles, while recycling the bulk of its solvent and using no water. The company has separately put a 180-million-barrel resource estimate around the PR Spring asset and issued a request for proposals to accelerate its development. The SAF MOU layers a low-carbon-fuel pathway on top of that existing hydrocarbon-recovery work rather than replacing it.
Want the full picture on PR Spring, ECOSolv, and the Foreland refinery? Explore the Sky Quarry breakdown here.
The operating reality
Any honest read of the story has to account for the quarter behind it. The Eagle Springs / Foreland refinery experienced outages in late 2025 and the first quarter of 2026 for boiler repairs, which halted production and drove a sharp drop in revenue — first-quarter net sales fell to a negligible figure while the plant was down, against more than $6 million in the year-earlier quarter, and the company reported a net loss of roughly $2.3 million. Management has said the repairs are complete and production is expected to resume around June 2026, subject to feedstock procurement. The company is a micro-cap that executed a 1-for-8 reverse stock split in March 2026 to maintain its Nasdaq listing, and its development plans remain subject to financing.
None of that is hidden, and none of it is unusual for a company at this stage — but it is the context against which the SAF ambition has to be weighed. The refinery has to be running reliably before it can be upgraded into anything, and the PR Spring and SAF pathways depend on capital the company has not yet fully secured. The MOU is a credible strategic step; it is not, on its own, production. Investors should size the opportunity against the execution and funding risk that comes with it.
Four low-carbon-fuel names investors are watching alongside Sky Quarry
Sky Quarry is a tiny player in a field that includes far larger and better-capitalized low-carbon-fuel developers. The peer group below shows how the SAF and renewable-fuel theme is being built out — and how uneven the economics still are.
Darling Ingredients Inc. (NYSE:DAR) is the heavyweight of the group. Through its Diamond Green Diesel joint venture, Darling is one of the largest renewable-fuel producers in North America; it reported Q1 2026 results showing its share of Diamond Green Diesel EBITDA at $151.2 million on 272.4 million gallons of renewable fuels sold (about $1.11 per gallon), and used a May 11 Investor Day to lay out its evolution across rendering, collagen, and renewable energy. Darling shows what scale looks like in this market — the opposite end of the spectrum from Sky Quarry's single small refinery.
Gevo, Inc. (NASDAQ:GEVO) is a closer thematic match on the SAF side. A renewable-fuels and carbon-management company, Gevo reported positive cash flow from operations of $20 million in the fourth quarter of 2025 and is targeting neutral-to-positive operating cash flow for 2026, while advancing its alcohol-to-jet "ATJ-30" SAF project at Gevo North Dakota — supported by a U.S. Department of Energy loan-guarantee conditional commitment as it works to secure project-level construction financing. Gevo underscores both the promise of SAF and the heavy reliance on policy support and project financing that defines the space.
Aemetis, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMTX) rounds out the developer side. The company reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of $54.6 million, up 27% year over year, across its California ethanol, dairy renewable-natural-gas, and India biodiesel segments, and recognized $4.0 million of Section 45Z production tax credits in the quarter. Its fully permitted renewable-diesel and SAF facility in California is awaiting final financing, pending further clarity from federal 45Z guidance — a reminder of how dependent these projects are on tax-credit rules.
OPAL Fuels Inc. (NASDAQ:OPAL) offers a renewable-natural-gas comparison. A leader in capturing and converting biogas into low-carbon-intensity RNG and renewable electricity, OPAL has entered a master agreement to monetize roughly $100 million of Section 45Z Clean Fuel Production Tax Credits over the coming years, with an initial closing anticipated in the second quarter. OPAL illustrates the same monetization-of-environmental-attributes mechanic that DevvStream is meant to bring to the Sky Quarry collaboration.
Across all four, the common thread is the one driving interest in Sky Quarry: U.S. policy and tight conventional supply are pulling capital toward domestic low-carbon-fuel production, and companies that can credibly position assets in that gap are being watched closely. The difference is scale — these peers are running or financing large platforms, while Sky Quarry is trying to leverage one small, strategically located refinery into the same trade.
What to watch from here
For Sky Quarry specifically, the near-term catalysts are sequencing in a clear order. First and most important is the refinery restart — resuming reliable production at Foreland after the boiler outages is the precondition for everything else. From there, investors will watch for any binding agreements or pilot activity flowing from the Southern Energy Renewables and DevvStream MOU, progress on the PR Spring RFP and the broader development financing, and any concrete steps toward the refinery upgrades that would let Foreland produce on-spec aviation fuels.
None of this changes the fundamental reality that Sky Quarry is a development-stage micro-cap working through an operating disruption, with ambitions that outrun its current balance sheet. But the combination of the only permitted refinery in Nevada, a large waste-to-oil resource, a proprietary recovery technology, and a fresh low-carbon-fuel collaboration gives the company a more strategically interesting position than its size suggests — in a market where domestic refining and sustainable aviation fuel are both being repriced at once. Execution, and funding, will determine whether the position converts into production.
Stay ahead of the next Sky Quarry milestone — get updates and the full story here.
About Sky Quarry
Sky Quarry Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYQ) is an integrated energy and resource-recovery company. Through its wholly owned subsidiary Foreland Refining Corporation, it operates the Foreland Refinery in Railroad Valley, Nevada — described as the only operating refinery in the state — and is advancing its PR Spring development in Utah using its proprietary ECOSolv process to recover hydrocarbons from oil-saturated sands and waste materials, including asphalt shingles.
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