OriginOil Broadens Focus to Address Markets Each Estimated At More Than $100 Billion in Value
New Revenue Streams Open to SOS Technology include Oil and Gas Water Cleanup and Industrial Wastewater Treatment
Los Angeles, California – 20 June, 2012 – OriginOil, Inc. (OTC/BB: OOIL) developer of a breakthrough technology to convert algae into renewable crude oil, has found that its platform technology which separates solids from liquids in a single pass, without the use of chemicals, has multiple market implications beyond the algae industry.
“We are seeing additional revenue and growth opportunities where our technology has the potential to become a cost-effective strategy in multiple vertical industries,” stated OriginOil CEO Riggs Eckelberry. “For example, oil and gas drilling, industrial wastewater treatment, toxic remediation and any place that organic solids are separated out of liquids may be a potential growth market for our suite of extraction technologies.”
The Company’s patent-pending portfolio of extraction technologies, based on Single Step Extraction™ and known collectively as ‘SOS’ or Solids Out of Solution™, was originally developed to extract algae from the large amount of water in which it grows.
Today, water management and oil recovery are among the toughest challenges facing oil and gas producers, especially in the new era of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), that requires millions of gallons of fresh water to treat just one well.
Recent lab testing of the SOS system on petroleum ‘frac flowback’ water has pointed to its effectiveness in removing solids, soluble organics and emulsified liquids from water in a single chemical free, low energy step.
“Early on, we had to learn how to dewater algae without chemicals and with very little energy. We then realized we have a platform that potentially opens up significant additional addressable markets which we are exploring for near and long term growth,” added Eckelberry.
Those markets may include:
Algae Market:
According to a report by SBI, the market for harvesting and extraction technologies and algae biofuels production is projected to grow to $1.6 billion by 2015. Clean Edge estimates the total biofuels market size to reach $105.4 billion by 2018.
Produced Water Market:
According to Global Water Intelligence, “The oil industry produces around 2.5 times more water than oil. By 2025 it will be producing five times more water than oil. Handling produced water is a tremendous growth market, but the real opportunity is in treatment.”
With daily world oil production exceeding 70 million barrels, this implies a potential market for the disposal and treatment of produced water of at least $400 billion, because energy companies pay between $3 and $12 to dispose of each barrel of produced water, as reported by Greentech Media.
Industrial Wastewater Treatment Market:
In its report, “Water, Wastewater, and Filtration: World Markets”, McIlvaine forecasts a $183 billion market for water and wastewater treatment and filtration products and services including outsourcing.