Oman-founded 44.01 lands first Frontier in-situ mineralization offtake

44.01 has secured $11.7 million in carbon removal offtake agreements from Frontier. The contracts cover the removal and permanent underground storage of 20,932 metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2028 and 2031. The transaction is a commitment to purchase future carbon removal services. It is not an equity investment and it is not a conventional funding round. No valuation and no equity terms were disclosed. 44.01 was founded in Oman and is headquartered in London. It uses in-situ mineralization. Captured carbon dioxide is dissolved in water and injected roughly 1,000 meters underground into peridotite, a magnesium-rich rock. The reaction forms stable solid carbonates within one to three years. The company has run five short-duration field pilots since 2023 in Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The Frontier offtake supports continuous operations at a project in the UAE that will use biogas from a wastewater treatment plant. Talal Hasan is founder and chief executive. Frontier is a carbon removal buyers’ consortium that includes Google, Meta, Stripe and Shopify. This is Frontier’s first offtake for in-situ mineralization. The volume is modest relative to global emissions. It is sized to test whether the process can run continuously over multiple years and to update cost estimates. The implied price is roughly $559 per ton, though the announcement does not publish a unit price or each buyer’s share. For an industrial emitter in the UAE or Oman the useful distinction is between conventional geological storage and mineralization. Conventional storage requires a suitable sedimentary basin. Mineralization uses reactive rock that is abundant in the region. A source within 50 kilometers of peridotite can be closer to storage than a conventional site more than 300 kilometers away. Whether the continuous operation meets the contracted volume and cost is not yet known. Delivery starts in 2028. The offtake does not transfer ownership of the company. It creates a future purchase obligation if the removal is delivered and verified. If the project does not deliver the full 20,932 tons, the payment follows the delivered volume under the contract terms. Those terms have not been published beyond the total value and the tonnage. A further limit is scale. Twenty thousand tons over four years is a pilot-scale commercial step. Larger projects will require more water, more wells and more continuous uptime. The agreement is designed to generate that operating record. It does not yet show the record. Hasan said the agreement marks a step from demonstration to commercialization. Frontier described it as a key stepping stone for in-situ mineralization. Both statements are from the announcement. They do not include measured continuous-operation data because that data starts in 2028. Peridotite formations in Oman and the UAE are among the largest exposed examples of the rock. The method can in principle serve industrial sources such as cement and steel that sit near the rock but far from conventional storage basins. The offtake tests one site. It does not yet test multiple sites. A cement plant in the UAE that currently has no nearby conventional storage can compare the distance and the cost of mineralization. The comparison depends on water use, injection rate and verification cost. None of those operating figures is available until the continuous phase runs. The offtake buys the chance to measure them. The carbon source for the contracted volume is biogas from a wastewater treatment plant in the UAE. That source is biogenic. The same injection method can accept carbon dioxide from industrial point sources. The offtake does not yet include an industrial point-source volume. It includes one biogenic volume. Frontier’s other offtakes have covered different removal methods. This is the first for in-situ mineralization. The distinction is the storage pathway. The distinction does not change the fact that delivery and verification still lie in the future. The company has demonstrated the reaction in both Oman and the UAE. The contracted volume is for the UAE site. An Oman volume is not part of this offtake. The geology is similar. The commercial contract is for one country. If 44.01 publishes the tons actually mineralized each year from 2028 and the verified permanence, the offtake has an operational result. If the next line is only another offtake announcement, count the tons delivered against the 20,932 contracted. The figure missing is both.