FIXED ASSETS, NET

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2024

Property, Plant and Equipment [Abstract]

Fixed assets consist of the following (in thousands):


	Useful Life (in years)	March 31, 2024		December 31, 2023
Equipment	7 - 20	$	287,067	$	276,331

Leasehold improvements	15	2,877		2,852
Office equipment & furniture	5 - 7	1,446		1,446
Vehicles	5	15,796		15,087
Building	20	3,912		3,663
Turnarounds	4	19,388		21,100
Construction in progress		55,043		53,467
Land		9,120		9,439
Land improvement	15	972		354
Total fixed assets		395,621		383,739
Less accumulated depreciation		(62,672)		(57,628)
Net fixed assets		$	332,949	$	326,111

The increase in fixed assets is due to the investment in the conventional refinery project at the Mobile Refinery, which began April 1, 2022, and which includes construction in progress. Depreciation expense was $7.2 million and $3.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2024 and 2023, respectively, for the continued operations. In addition, we sold a portion of land at the Mobile Refinery for $2.6 million for purposes of building a rail road spur at the facility site.

Asset Retirement Obligations:

The Company has asset retirement obligations with respect to certain of its refinery assets due to various legal obligations to clean and/or dispose of various component parts of each refinery at the time they are retired. However, these component parts can be used for extended and indeterminate periods of time as long as they are properly maintained and/or upgraded. It is the Company’s practice and current intent to maintain its refinery assets and continue making improvements to those assets based on technological advances. As a result, the Company believes that its refinery assets have indeterminate lives for purposes of estimating asset retirement obligations because dates, or ranges of dates, upon which the Company would retire refinery assets cannot reasonably be estimated. When a date or range of dates can reasonably be estimated for the retirement of any component part of a refinery, the Company estimates the cost of performing the retirement activities and records a liability for the fair value of that cost using established present value techniques.