Los Angeles, CA February 7, 2012  – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), a leading developer of next-generation technologies to produce transportation fuels, chemicals and foods, announced today it demonstrated its low-energy Algae Appliance™ to industry executives from a workshop hosted by the National Algae Association (NAA) at the University of Southern California.

OriginOil also showed new technologies in development in the lab, and the Max One mobile algae harvester. A video and a photo gallery of the event can be viewed at http://www.originoil.com/latest-news/national-algae-association-tours-originoil.html

“This is the first time in the USA that an industry group has seen our Algae Appliance, and we are very pleased with the feedback,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “We showed an early version of the system last August to an industry group in Australia – and now we’re live in the USA!”

The Algae Appliance is a low-energy, chemical-free, continuous-flow ‘wet harvest’ system that can remove up to 90 percent of the water in which algae lives. Dewatering algae is considered a major barrier to commercial algae production. OriginOil released the system in October 2011 as an algae harvesting “starter kit” for producers the world over who are exiting the laboratory phase. For more information, visit www.algaeappliance.com.

“We are very pleased with the attendees’ interest and enthusiasm for our current and upcoming products,” said Ken Reynolds, OriginOil vice president of marketing. “We developed several potential sales and strategic partnership opportunities as a direct result of this event, and we plan to schedule more of these demonstrations of our breakthrough technologies to this fast-growing industry.”

Mexicali Valley, Mexico and Los Angeles, CA February 3, 2012 – Algae producer Aquaviridis and OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today announced that Aquaviridis has signed a commercial agreement with OriginOil to help develop the multi-phase algae production rollout at its Mexicali, Mexico site, a potential model for algae sites throughout the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) region, with a focus on desert areas of the American Southwest and Mexico.

OriginOil will provide its expertise to help develop growth and harvesting solutions and implement appropriate OriginOil technologies. The facility will also serve as a test bed for OriginOil innovations.

In announcing the agreement, Aquaviridis president Thomas Byrne stated, “After evaluating OriginOil’s portfolio, our technical team felt that OriginOil had some novel, scalable, and potentially game-changing technologies for algae harvesting and growth enhancement. We are excited about the opportunity to work closely with them as a partner during our research and planning stage. Having the right partners and technologies is critical, as our expectation is to have this facility in revenue this year.”

Aquaviridis is backed by private sector funding, with plans to immediately scale up from research and development to ten acres of pilot algae production by the middle of this year. Commercial scale production capacity is expected by the second quarter of 2013.  Aquaviridis selected the Mexicali Valley as a strategic location due to favorable growing conditions, strong local and governmental support, and available sources of carbon dioxide.

OriginOil’s vice president of marketing, Ken Reynolds added, “The Mexicali Valley is a great place to develop an algae industry, given its climate and access to industry research and resources throughout North America. With the U.S. as a neighboring market for high value exports, Mexico is in an excellent position to take the lead in areas such as research and production of algae for nutritional products, animal feed, and oil for biofuels, which would create long-term regional economic growth and job production.”

Los Angeles, CA January 13, 2012 –  OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today announced its plans to co-develop an integrated system with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for direct conversion of raw algae into a renewable crude oil that can be used by existing petroleum refineries.

“We believe this is a major breakthrough for OriginOil and a major step forward for the algae industry,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “We already lead the industry with our chemical-free, low-energy, continuous high-flow harvesting system.

“From there it’s a natural step to helping algae growers make a direct crude oil replacement right on site, giving them direct access to the existing world market for transportation fuels, including jet fuel. That’s an instant upgrade from what is now a niche market, to the immediate 86 million barrel per day global crude oil market.”

OriginOil’s planned Biocrude System™ will integrate its own harvesting system with state-of-the-art biomass processing technology being developed under the recently-announced research agreement with INL, to convert raw algae into barrels of renewable crude oil.

This much cleaner replacement for conventional petroleum will be designed to be compatible with conventional petroleum refineries. Renewable algae crude could also be blended with other biomass sources to improve their performance.

Dr. Deborah T. Newby, Project Manager at DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL) commented, “We are excited to work with OriginOil on its Biocrude System and leverage its algae processing expertise and technology. Algae is a high energy biomass and can function as a force multiplier to blend in other biomass waste such as from forestry and agriculture into a uniform renewable crude oil substitute. This may well support the U.S. military’s strategic fuels diversification program.”

In operation since 1949, the Idaho National Laboratory (www.inl.gov) is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the DOE on energy research and national defense. Its mission is to ensure the nation’s energy security with safe, clean, competitive, and sustainable energy systems and unique national and homeland security capabilities.

Los Angeles, CA – December 15, 2011 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today announced it has co-founded a new joint venture (JV), to develop biorefineries serving U.S. and NATO military requirements for alternative fuels.

The JV, Future Energy Solutions Unlimited, Inc. (FES), with its wholly owned Australian subsidiary, Alternate Energy Systems Pty Ltd (AES), plans to carry out bankable feasibility studies supporting project development and project delivery for diversified biofuel refining centers in strategic locations around the world.

OriginOil intends to contribute its proprietary systems and process knowledge to help develop multi-feedstock blending standards that will be needed for the new biorefineries. OriginOil recently announced a research agreement with the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, in part to tackle these standards.

The Energime Group of Companies has given preliminary commitments to provide $1.5 million in matching funds to AES and $3 million to FES, for a total of $4.5 million. The investments, to be finalized in early 2012, are intended to fund the planned bankable feasibility studies, leading to a key role for Energime in designing, building, operating and owning these refineries.

“We are excited to be involved in this dramatic development in biofuels production,” said Bill Sosinsky, CEO of Energime. “We look forward to co-developing projects with Larry Sirmans throughout the world in this fast growing space. We believe other key players in private industry will soon be joining OriginOil in this venture, which responds to a mission-critical need of the U.S. and NATO for strategic fuels independence.”

“Through its massive commitment to alternative fuels, the U.S. military has provided the market both opportunity and challenge, which we intend to meet,” said Larry Sirmans, CEO of FES. “Our project delivery team has a unique blend of industry-specific knowledge and experience as well as very relevant military experience.  We know and understand what both the military and the industry face to make this a reality. We are focusing on projects initially in the U.S. and Australia.  Longer term, we see tremendous opportunity for Asia, Europe and Africa.”

A veteran of large-scale biofuels project development, Sirmans was Projects Director for Agri Energy and project developer for Australian Biofuels-Swan Hill Ethanol. He is the outgoing Technical Director of Australia’s MBD Energy Ltd, a leading player in Australia’s fast-growing algae biofuels sector.

“Our venture with Larry Sirmans is a game-changer for algae because these biorefineries will rely on algae to provide high energy values and a molecular structure that is virtually identical to petroleum,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “It all starts with these feasibility studies and the setting of multi-feedstock standards. We’re excited to be helping out.”

In August, the departments of Agriculture, Energy and Navy announced their intent to invest up to $510 million during the next three years in partnership with the private sector to produce advanced drop-in biofuels to power military and commercial transportation.

Los Angeles, CA – December 8, 2011 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today announced the funding of a new research agreement with the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Under the agreement, OriginOil and INL will collaborate with a goal toward establishing industry standards for algal biomass, a critical step toward making algal biofuels a competitive alternative to petroleum.

Under the terms of the new Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), OriginOil will provide INL with its Single Step Extraction™ technology, and contribute its knowledge of how to stimulate oil production and pre-treat for consistent extraction of the algae and its co-products.

OriginOil expects to benefit from INL’s scientific and engineering expertise and its large Process Demonstration Facility which boasts advanced biofuels processing capabilities and equipment, including biochemical, thermochemical and other downstream conversion technologies. A primary effort will be to integrate algae with terrestrial biomass sources to achieve large-scale biofuels production.

“The US Navy alone plans to achieve 50% use of alternative fuels in just eight years, a goal of eight million barrels of biofuels per year that must be blended from non-food fuels like algae,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil’s CEO. “But to blend, we must standardize, using the latest breakthrough technologies. We are proud to contribute to this effort and will share what we learn with our approved partners worldwide.”

Deborah T. Newby, Molecular Biologist at INL’s Biofuels and Renewable Energy Department, commented, “INL develops tests and deploys advanced renewable energy technology, including research on algae. This agreement is to assist OriginOil by conducting evaluations of processes and technologies that may help find solutions to converting algae into energy feedstocks more efficiently, by optimizing and standardizing various formats. This research may accelerate the pursuit of national energy independence initiatives.”

Paul Reep, OriginOil’s senior vice president of technology and formerly a manager at the Idaho National Laboratory, was responsible for bringing the parties together. Mr. Reep stated, “OriginOil’s focus on developing standards for the industry in partnership with the US Department of Energy will set the stage for a multi-source system that depends heavily on algae, leading to its rapid expansion as a major fuel source alongside petroleum oil and natural gas.”

In operation since 1949, the Idaho National Laboratory (www.inl.gov) is a science-based, applied engineering national laboratory dedicated to supporting the DOE on energy research and national defense. Its mission is to ensure the nation’s energy security with safe, clean, competitive, and sustainable energy systems and unique national and homeland security capabilities.

Los Angeles, CA – November 30, 2011 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today announced the appointment of Dr. Thomas H. Ulrich to its Board of Advisors. Dr. Ulrich was most recently an Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Advisory Scientist and worked closely with OriginOil to create a strategic partnership between INL and OriginOil, as well as launching the first Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between OriginOil and INL. He has been a key supporter of OriginOil’s technology and offers tremendous value to the company as a highly regarded thought leader in field of biomass and bioenergy.

“It was my privilege to work alongside Dr. Ulrich at the Idaho National Lab, and Tom has been key to our collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy on biofuel standardization,” said Paul Reep, OriginOil’s senior vice president of technology. “We have a similar vision and goal of creating standards for biofuels that will advance the whole industry. The OriginOil team joins me in welcoming Dr. Ulrich.”

Dr. Ulrich added, “This is a great opportunity for me to continue to contribute to our nation’s pursuit of energy independence. OriginOil offers a cost-effective and scalable industrial process that has the potential to make algae a very viable petroleum alternative.  Driven by its innovation, intellectual property portfolio, and industry relationships, I believe OriginOil will be the key player in industrial algae technologies.”

While at INL, Dr. Ulrich collaborated with OriginOil in the design, implementation, and successful completion of OriginOil’s Phase 1 CRADA in February of 2009. This Phase 1 CRADA resulted in an unprecedented Energy Balance Model bringing algae-based fuels one step closer to reality. He has also contributed to the design of Phases 2 and 3 of the CRADA. Dr. Ulrich has been a key contributor to developing the Blendable Feedstock Standard, in which OriginOil is collaborating with the Department of Energy, and which has the potential to help reduce biofuel dependence on food crops.

Dr. Ulrich also initiated and expanded INL’s algae biomass R&D program focusing on the integration of algal systems into INL’s feedstock supply chain with the development of a uniform feedstock for the bioenergy industry.

Dr. Thomas Ulrich has more than 25 years of experience in planning, securing funding, executing projects as a group leader and principal scientist in private industry and at INL. He has successfully identified internal and external researchers that have strategically partnered to pursue and capture a broad range of Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and private industry R&D funding opportunities.

For his contribution to the Department of Energy’s seminal 2011 Billion-Ton Update, Dr. Ulrich received a Letter of Commendation and a Certificate of Appreciation from the Biomass Program of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  His areas of research include assessing the quality of biomass feedstock that is derived from genetically modified plants, and characterizing gene expression that impacts biomass productivity.

Dr. Ulrich has collaborated on biomass projects funded by the Department of Commerce and Department of Energy. He was most recently an INL Advisory Scientist in the Biological Science Department. He earned his Ph.D. in Agronomy from the University of Illinois, Champaign–Urbana, Illinois.  Dr. Ulrich also holds a M.S. in Genetics from Washington State University and a B.S. in Zoology from Washington State University, Pullman, WA.

Los Angeles, CA – November 16, 2011 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today announced the Algae Appliance™, a commercial entry-level algae harvesting system that will help producers process algae at very low cost and without chemicals.

Slated for commercial release in the first half of 2012, the Algae Appliance provides a low energy, chemical-free, continuous flow ‘wet harvest’ system, with the potential to remove up to 90 percent of the initial water volume. Field testing will begin soon with select partners who have current or near-term large volumes of algae for harvesting. Interested parties should sign up at www.algaeappliance.com.

Larry Sirmans, Technical Director of OriginOil’s key Australian partner MBD Energy, observed: “This Algae Appliance should be very beneficial to producers and researchers who are developing the most efficient processes for growing algae at commercial scale.”

“We are continuing to scale up our technology at MBD’s pilot site in Australia,” said Bill Charneski, OriginOil senior director of product engineering. “Now, everything we have learned is going into a standardized entry-level system to help the worldwide algae industry meet the high demand for sustainable, low-cost algae production.”

Charneski introduced the new Algae Appliance today at the 4^th Algae World Asia conference in Beijing, China. The new system is modular and incorporates low-energy, chemical-free concentration. Optionally, the system can also ’crack’ the microscopic algae cells for downstream processing needs. Energy requirements are extremely low, at about 0.002 kWh to process 10 liters per minute, the Algae Appliance’s middle range of performance.

“Our Algae Appliance can process as little as two liters per minute, which is perfect for a small research installation,” said Ken Reynolds, OriginOil’s vice president of marketing. “But it is versatile enough to handle up to ten times that rate, serving capacities of 100,000 liters and more. And of course we’ll make it easy for our customers to upgrade all the way to production scale.”

“With algae-based fuels now being used in commercial aviation and in the military, there is tremendous pressure on our industry to deliver much lower-cost, high-volume algae products,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “The Algae Appliance is expected to answer this demand, and drive the eventual licensing and distribution of our technology worldwide.”

Los Angeles, CA – October 27, 2011 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today announced that its recent development of a new harvest pretreatment process was also found to substantially increase the growth rate of algae cultures.

The growth rate discovery is an unexpected bonus for the pretreatment innovation, which was developed to condition algae cultures for harvest. OriginOil’s research team has theorized that the process stimulates algae cells to increase the uptake of vital nutrients such as CO2. It uses extremely low power electromagnetic fields, can operate on a small solar panel and can be retrofitted to any algae production system.

“We’ve been developing ways to make our harvesting stage more efficient by pretreating the algae while it is still in growth phase,” said Paul Reep, OriginOil’s senior vice president of technology. “It’s a very promising suite of technologies that now includes this electromagnetic process, which we’ve learned increases growth rates substantially. That could make a big difference in our industry’s growth efficiency projections, and we intend to validate this at full scale as soon as possible.”

“These growth rates are such a dramatic improvement over previous electrical stimulation efforts that we codenamed it Green Thumb,” said Jose Sanchez Piña, OriginOil vice president of growth and production and one of the inventors. “We were also excited to learn that the technology has shown excellent results with both fresh and saltwater algae strains.”

OriginOil recently filed for U.S. patent protection of the new technology, its 22nd patent application, entitled “Systems and Methods for Increasing Growth of Biomass Feedstocks.” The inventors are Nicholas Eckelberry, Michael Green and Jose Sanchez Piña.

In his presentation “Solving the Food vs. Fuel Issue,” OriginOil CEO Riggs Eckelberry asked how it was that Brazil will import one billion liters of ethanol this year, after a bad sugar crop. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “Given continued demand for both fuel and food, is this seesaw likely to stop?”

Eckelberry concluded, “In this zero-sum game, there can be only one winner. Food will always win, since biofuels can be replaced by fossil fuels.”

He continued, “Instead of waiting for algae to take over from existing biofuels, we should use it now to diversify feedstocks and increase their fuel value. Biofuels from algae can have a relatively high fuel efficiency ratio.”

Eckelberry cited examples of combining high-volume forestry waste products with high energy-value algae, or using algae to reduce the carbon footprint of ethanol plants – eventually replacing wheat or corn altogether. (Manildra, Australia’s largest ethanol producer, has announced plans to diversify into algae.)

Additionally, Eckelberry called for support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s diversification initiative, so that refiners in a given region could mix and match sources and avoid feedstock dislocations.

OriginOil was an algae industry representative at the Department of Energy’s Biomass Preconversion and Densification Workshop held on August 23 and 24, 2011, at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). In his recent article for Algae Industry Magazine, “It’s Time to Set Uniform Algae Feedstock Standards”, Eckelberry provided a link to presentations from the workshop and the subsequent webinar.

Los Angeles, CA – October 10, 2011 – OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to extract oil from algae and an emerging leader in the global algae oil services industry, today reported that it was one of “11 Next-Generation Commodity Names” discussed in a Forbes Online interview of investment educator Jason Burack.

In Kate Stalter’s interview at Forbes.com, Burack said: “Some of [the advanced biofuels companies] that people should add to their watch list—and I’m not advocating, you know, people go out and buy these immediately—some of them are Amyris (AMRS), Ceres, Sapphire Energy, Solazyme (SZYM), OriginOil (OOIL)—these types of companies have very big investors stocking them….”

Burack, one of the founders of Wall Street for Main Street (website, Facebook), discussed how these companies are currently undervalued despite improving fundamentals. He said that “some of these companies just continue to get more undervalued … the fundamentals have actually improved in the last six to eight months. More good news has come out … More positive things have come out with some of these resource companies, and they have expanded the resources greatly, and the stock price has gone down.”

“We’re rapidly cementing our unique role in next-generation algae harvesting,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “As a result, we’re being highlighted here with much larger companies that have famous backers like Warren Buffett, Vinod Khosla and Bill Gates. As our technology develops we can expect to see more corporations and investors take note of our position in the market.”

Burack went on to discuss applications and companies saying, “This is the next generation of really good technologies.” Commenting specifically on algae he noted, “Algae are just something that’s very important. Most people don’t realize this, but all petroleum really is—the majority of petroleum—is fossilized algae … They can grow algae and have it mature in only a few days, and they can turn it into oil and turn it into bioplastics without fossilizing it … What took Mother Nature millions of years, they can do in the lab in a few days.”

(Listen to complete interview here)