Altela, an Albuquerque-based company whose proprietary technology helps to clean the waste water from oil and gas extraction, announced they raised a first funding of $750k.
Cleantech investors and observers may reasonably disagree about the inclusion of any oil and gas extraction-related technology under the "Clean Technology" umbrella. Some may feel that any technology which makes oil and gas extraction more efficient isn't "clean". Others (and I lean this way myself -- but please note the disclaimers all over this site) would note that oil and gas extraction is not going to go away anytime soon, so as long as we're going to be extracting it out of the ground, doing it in such ways as to minimize the negative ecosystem impacts is at least a "cleaner technology" that fits well within the cleantech investment thesis. Domestic oil and gas extraction produced 756 billion gallons of waste water in 1995...
Certainly it is a potentially lucative investment area, with current disposal costs at $5/barrel (each barrel is 42 gallons). Investors in this round include EnerTech, Verge venture fund, and local angel group Sandia Capital Partners LLC.
