Seal Beach-based Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a provider of natural gas for fleets that’s backed by T. Boone Pickens, has called off its plan to buy a Canadian maker of natural gas refueling equipment for $17 million.
Clean Energy said last month it planned to buy Toronto’s FuelMaker Corp. from the U.S. arm of Honda Motor Co.
On Thursday, Clean Energy said it “mutually”‘ agreed with Honda to halt the deal.
Honda and FuelMaker “were unable to deliver audited financial statements” to meet an initial deadline, Clean Energy spokeswoman Ina McGuinness told Bloomberg.
FuelMaker makes and services refueling equipment for vehicles powered by compressed natural gas. It also makes a home refueling device that compresses natural gas from residential gas lines for fueling alternative-fuel vehicles.
The Honda Civic GX natural gas vehicle is designed to refuel overnight in an owner’s garage using equipment from FuelMaker.
The acquisition would have been Clean Energy’s second in as many months.
In August, the company bought a Dallas landfill gas processing plant for $19 million.
Clean Energy went public last year, raising $120 million.
The company has a market value of about $875 million.
Legendary oilman Pickens is Clean Energy’s principal shareholder, founder and a director. He started Clean Energy as a tiny part of Dallas-based Mesa Petroleum in the late 1980s. He split it off in the late 1990s.
The company is part of Pickens’ push toward alternative sources of energy. Earlier this year, he called for $1 trillion in government and private investment in windmills to cut dependence on foreign oil.
