Durham-based NET Power has fired President and Chief Operating Officer Brian Allen and Akash Patel, its chief financial officer, according to an SEC filing on Tuesday.
CEO Danny Rice will serve as president and interim chief financial officer and Marc Horstman as chief operating officer.
NET Power shares closed Tuesday at $2.26, near its all-time low after trading as high as $14.27 in the past year. Shares are down more than 77% in the past year.
Since its start 15 years ago, NET Power has been trying to commercialize the generation of emissions-free power from conventional fossil fuels. However, the clean energy technology company disclosed in March higher estimates for building its first power plant.
The cost for developing its Project Permian in Texas is now projected at $1.7 billion to $2 billion, roughly double the initial estimates. The company also pushed back the earliest start date for the Midland/Odessa, Texas, operations until 2029. That’s a delay from last September’s projection of second-half 2027 and first-half 2028.
As of March 7, 2024, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum owned 41.9% of NET Power shares as the company’s largest investor, according to NET Power’s April 2024 proxy statement.
Rice joined the company in June 2023 as CEO. He has more than 15 years of experience with energy companies, including leading Rice Energy through its $1 billion initial public offering in 2014 and eventual $8.2 billion sale to EQT in 2017. He also oversaw the creation and growth of Rice Midstream Partners, which was acquired by EQT Midstream Partners for $2.4 billion in 2018.
Hortsman has served as NET Power’s head of product development since joining the company in May 2023. Before then, he held senior leadership roles at Vertiv Holdings Co., a provider of digital infrastructure for data centers, communication networks, and commercial and industrial environments. He has also held leadership roles at Siemens and product leadership roles at Rolls-Royce and General Electric. He began his career as an engineer officer in the U.S. Army. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Dayton.
Allen joined NET Power in 2022, although he had previously worked for the company from 2016 to 2018. Patel joined the company in 2020 and previously worked at Barclays, Citigroup and KPMG.
As of Dec. 31, NET Power had 68 full-time employees and six contractors. It opened a second corporate headquarters in Houston in July. Rice lives in Dallas.