Vivakor Signs Definitive Merger Agreement with Empire Diversified Energy for a Combined Enterprise Value of Approximately $250 Million - Seite 2

Vivakor Chairman and CEO James Ballengee commented, "This is a significant milestone for our company and we believe accelerates our vision to build a state-of-the-art, clean energy and remediation technologies company. Upon a successful closing of the Merger, we intend to construct and deploy our fourth Remediation Processing Center (RPC IV) at The Port of West Virginia, where Empire currently operates, as well as integrate our transportation and midstream assets into existing operations. We cannot be more excited about this merger, the synergies it presents, and the growth opportunities we see the merger presenting for the future of Vivakor. We look forward to moving this merger toward a closing by the end of September and will update shareholders and the Wall Street community as we continue our progress."

Empire's primary location is in Follansbee, West Virginia, where it operates The Port of West Virginia ("The Port") within its Eco-Industrial Complex, situated along the Ohio River, with nearly 1,000 acres of contiguous land where it serves as the crossroads of the East Coast and Midwest through its trimodal (road, river, rail) terminal facility. Empire is currently deploying a host of innovative and sustainable technologies serving the transportation, recyclable waste, steel, warehousing, and other energy sectors to help decarbonize the region.

In additional to the traditional facilities at The Port, Empire's flagship waste-to-energy pyrolysis plant, which is slated to come online in the second fiscal quarter of this year, is intended to provide behind-the-grid electrical power to The Port, while producing salable hydrochloric acid and excess gas into the market. The plant is designed to recycle 70 tons of plastics per day through a pyrolysis process that employs high heat in the absence of oxygen, is environmentally friendly and virtually emission free. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) has selected the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2) as a recipient of up to $925 million in funding to advance the development of hydrogen projects throughout West Virginia, as well as parts of eastern Ohio and western Pennsylvania. Empire was selected from over 80 initial applicants and is slated to receive a portion of these funds to assist in the engineering and buildout of an anaerobic digester project at The Port as part of the ARCH2 project consortium.