“Algae Will Be Local”: OriginOil CEO to Speak at Algae World Summit in San Diego

Riggs Eckelberry will speak on decentralization of energy production through algae

Los Angeles, CA March 9, 2010 – OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, has announced that the company’s president and CEO, Riggs Eckelberry, will join a distinguished panel of speakers to kick off the Algae World Summit in San Diego, California, on May 18, 2010.

In keeping with the industry’s push to achieve commercial scale, this year’s Summit will focus on the critical phase “From Lab to Scale Up” and will push for collaboration between the many players in algae at all levels.

In the discussion, Eckelberry will build on his theme “Algae Will Be Local”. His argument is that industrialized algae requires industrial quantities of CO2. Because CO2 is too expensive to transport to a central location, most algae production will tend to occur at CO2 generating sites, leading to a highly decentralized energy model.

Eckelberry foresees the emergence of algae network operators who will provide the expertise to run these far-flung algae sites, and also aggregate the products for downstream processing. He points out that this model is a complete shift from centralized energy and will lead to the involvement of many types of businesses in energy generation.

OriginOil played a supporting role in launching this conference series, which uniquely focuses on the “value chain” of algae from supplier to end user. At last year’s inaugural summit, Riggs Eckelberry joined a distinguished panel of executives, including the National Biodiesel Board and Marathon Oil, to first discuss the emergence of a new algae industry.

“OriginOil has taken the lead in advocating a strong community that knits together researchers, manufacturers, providers and customers in a worldwide network,” said Eckelberry. “This year’s Algae World Summit directly supports this vision and that is why we have been such strong supporters of the event. We look forward to the opportunity to build a central role for algae in helping to reduce the world’s dependence on petroleum.”

In October 2009, OriginOil announced that its algae oil extraction system had reached the highest industry efficiency standards while requiring very low energy inputs. Since then, OriginOil has itself turned toward commercialization and recently announced its new end to end algae production system.

Unlike scientific research-oriented events, the goal of the Algae World Summit is to provide a forum where the algae community can discuss and learn how to build the links within the value chain that are necessary to make the algae industry a reality.

This year’s guest list includes representatives from The United States Department of Agriculture, SAIC, ExxonMobil and the U.S. Department of Energy, among many others.

The Algae World Summit will take place from May 17-20 at the Hilton Del Mar in San Diego, CA. For more information or to attend the conference, visit www.infocastinc.com/algae10.