Paladin homeland security unit invests in fuel efficiency

Published 23 February 2006

Two cheers for Paladin: The Paladin Homeland Security Fund, a unit of Paladin Capital Group, has given Irvine, California-based ORYXE Energy International, a developer and distributor of environmental fuel additives, financing which increases its Series C round to $27 million. In addition to Paladin, investors in the ORYXE Energy Series C financing include Ridgewood, New Jersey-based Ridgewood Capital, Costa Mesa, California-based Odyssey Venture Partners, and Heerlen, the Netherlands-based DSM Venturing. ORYXE Energy will use the funding to accelerate the development, distribution, and sale of its fuel additives which aim to reduce toxic emissions from fossil fuels. Alf Andreassen, managing director of Paladin Capital Group and co-founder of Paladin’s Homeland Security Fund, says: “Paladin places great importance on the development of breakthrough technologies that will help achieve U.S. energy goals…. ORYXE technologies have great potential for improving U.S. energy independence and reducing environmental pollution.”

ORYXE develops and markets proprietary fuel additives based on the company’s innovative research in combustion science. The company is currently selling its diesel fuel additive, OR-LED, to fuel producers in the Texas Low Emission Diesel market. The company was one of Red Herring’s 2004 Innovation 100 Winners award.

In May 2001 Vice-President Dick Cheney dismissed the idea of “conserving or rationing” as 1970s-era solutions to the U.S. energy shortages. He was wrong. As instability in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, and Nigeria grows, and as the pace of global warming accelerates, conservation, increased fuel efficiency, and alternative energy sources are not fuddled notions of aging 1960s radicals. Rather, they are — or should be — the central goals of capitalistic, free market, liberal societies. In the post-9/11 era, the search for fuel efficiency and alternative energy sources is also central to national security. Paladin, a paragon of the free market approach, understands all this, and its investment behavior reflects this deep understanding. The Washington, D.C.-based Paladin Capital Group is a leading private equity firm. It has more than $440 million under management.

-read more about ORYXE products at company Web site; for useful information about the U.S. energy situation, see the Web site of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS)