Carbon Sciences Announces Solution for Users of ExxonMobil Gasoline Process

SANTA BARBARA, CA--(Marketwire - Jul 10, 2012) - Carbon Sciences Inc. (OTCBB: CABN), the developer of a breakthrough technology to make transportation fuels and other valuable products from natural gas, today announced that the company's clean CO2-based technology could produce synthesis gas (syngas) from natural gas to feed operations using ExxonMobil's proprietary methanol to gasoline process. Syngas is an industry standard feedstock used to make transportation fuels and other valuable products usually derived from petroleum.

ExxonMobil, the world's largest publicly traded integrated petroleum and natural gas company, has developed a proprietary methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) process that converts natural gas to high quality clean gasoline when coupled with syngas and methanol synthesis technologies. MTG gasoline is fully compatible with conventional refinery gasoline and can be either blended with conventional refinery gasoline or sold separately with minimal further processing.

"The commercial viability of our breakthrough becomes apparent as more forward thinking companies adopt natural gas technologies to make transportation fuels," commented Byron Elton, the company's CEO. "Our CO2-based natural gas technology could be a very good frontend solution for users of ExxonMobil's methanol-to-gasoline process. The fuel produced by the ExxonMobil MTG process is the same gasoline being used today and the most important and valuable transportation fuel in the U.S. Other approaches to transforming natural gas into transportation fuels require a refinery step." 

Sundrop Fuels, a startup venture backed by Chesapeake Energy Corp. and two venture-capital firms, Oak Investment Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, recently announced plans to use the ExxonMobil MTG process to make gasoline from methanol. Sundrop intends to rely on forest waste as a feedstock to produce the syngas required for the first step.

"While we applaud all efforts to address our energy security challenges, we have to think big. We use approximately 140 billion gallons of gasoline in this country every year," continued Elton. "Unfortunately, the supply of forest waste is very limited and won't have a significant impact in meeting our transportation fuel needs. A better option is transforming our abundant supply of natural gas into liquid fuels that we can use in our existing transportation infrastructure. Natural gas is cheap, clean and domestic. By using captured CO2 or low value, high CO2 content natural gas in our proprietary CO2-based process, Carbon Sciences can produce a very green syngas for use in the production of liquid fuels."

The other commercially demonstrated route for transforming natural gas into transportation fuels is the widely known Fischer-Tropsch process (FT), discovered in the 1920's. Royal Dutch Shell, SASOL and other large energy companies have commercially used FT in several different forms to produce fuels from natural gas. Carbon Sciences' CO2-based technology is also the advantaged route to make the syngas needed for FT operations.

About Carbon Sciences, Inc.

Innovating at the forefront of chemical engineering, Carbon Sciences is developing a breakthrough technology to make cleaner and greener transportation fuels and other valuable products from natural gas. Our highly scalable, clean-tech process will enable the world to reduce its dependence on petroleum by transforming abundant and affordable natural gas into gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, and other products, such as hydrogen, methanol, pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides and plastics. The key to this process is a breakthrough catalyst that can reduce the cost of reforming natural gas into synthesis gas (syngas), the most costly step in making products from natural gas. To learn more about Carbon Sciences' breakthrough technology, please visit www.carbonsciences.com and follow us Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/carbonsciences.

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