Modern life is built on engineered carbon, and demand for it is not going away. The question is where the carbon comes from and what it costs the climate. Making carbon products from Kerogenate rather than crude oil decarbonizes the supply chain of the materials themselves: the process is designed around renewable heating, and it preserves valuable molecules instead of burning them.
Refining crude destroys valuable molecules, generates substantial greenhouse gas emissions, and is exposed to geopolitical disruption. Kerogen-based production retains those molecules, produces minimal emissions, and draws on reserves that sit overwhelmingly within the United States — aligned with national priorities for domestic supply of critical materials.
Pitch-derived carbon products from Kerogenate address some of the fastest-growing advanced material markets in the United States: small modular nuclear reactors, aerospace and defense, energy storage, automotive and mobility, electronics and semiconductors, and construction and infrastructure — sectors served today almost entirely by crude-oil-derived feedstocks.
Every one of these sectors is projected to grow over the coming decade, from roughly 4% per year in construction to around 25% per year in electronics and semiconductors:
Kerogenate's tunable chemistry lets us serve each sector on its own terms: tunable viscosity, thermal stability, and graphitization control for aerospace and defense ($150,000 to $250,000 per ton); neutron moderation and structural composites for small modular nuclear ($60,000 to $120,000 per ton); high conductivity and scalable purity for electronics; high carbon yield at low cost for energy storage; EMI shielding and lightweighting for mobility; and carbon fiber rebar, cement additives, and fireproofing for construction. Current U.S. usage spans from about 2,000 tons per year in small modular nuclear to roughly 27,000 tons per year in aerospace and defense:
Combining the USGS's 4.29-trillion-barrel in-place assessment of the Green River Formation with its survey of world oil-shale deposits puts global kerogen resources at roughly 5.7 trillion barrels of oil equivalent — well over three times the world's proved crude oil reserves — with over 70% concentrated in the Piceance Basin of Colorado, Wyoming, and the Uinta Basin of Utah.
That abundance keeps the economics stable: a low-cost domestic resource with prices insensitive to the shocks that move crude markets. For mineral owners, partnering with Kerogen Systems means directing kerogen toward high-value carbon products rather than fuels — much higher returns from the same mineral rights. KSI owns the process technology, the pilot plant, and a bench-scale unit for testing and process modelling; partners contribute mining, materials handling, permitting, utilities, and operations expertise for a vertically integrated operation that accelerates time-to-revenue and reduces risk.