Announcements

Rodman & Renshaw acted as exclusive placement agent for the transaction

Los Angeles, CA — July 7, 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 announced it has entered into a definitive convertible notes purchase agreement with certain institutional investors, for an aggregate purchase price of $1.0 million. The closing of the sale of the notes is anticipated to occur on or about July 11, 2011, subject to customary closing conditions.

“This financing represents our first institutional investment round,” commented Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil’s CEO. “We are pleased to be working with the premier Wall Street investment firm, Rodman & Renshaw, for this and future financings.”

The Company has commercialized its unique, patent-pending algae harvesting technology and recently signed its first order from MBD Energy, for a large-scale algae extraction system to be installed at the first of three commercial ‘CO2 to Energy’ power station projects in Australia. The purchase order followed recent successful trials of OriginOil’s extraction system at MBD research facilities.

The new system on order is one of the largest next-generation extraction systems of its kind. The equipment is expected to process up to 1100 liters (300 gallons) per minute of algae culture continuously, enough to process the daily harvest at MBD’s upcoming one hectare (2.5 acre) site at Queensland’s Tarong power station.

The company discussed its path to commercialization in a presentation to the National Algae Association, documented in this video.

OriginOil recently announced its intention to up-list its shares to trade on a senior U.S. securities exchange. The successful IPO of US algae producer Solazyme points to strong institutional investor demand for algae stocks.

Rodman & Renshaw, LLC, a subsidiary of Rodman & Renshaw Capital Group, Inc., (NASDAQ:RODM - News), acted as the exclusive placement agent for this transaction. For more information, please visit www.rodm.com.

A summary of the transaction will be included in the Company’s current report on Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.