HispanicBusiness

CALGARY, AB -- (Marketwire) -- 01/16/13 -- Petrosonic Energy Inc. (OTCQB: PSON), an emerging leader in heavy oil upgrading and related technologies, announced today that it has completed an equity financing of $3.1 million with a group of strategic retail and institutional investors.

"Our original goal was to raise $1.5 million," stated Petrosonic CEO Art Agolli. "However, interest in the offering was much greater than we anticipated, which we believe is a reflection of the tremendous enthusiasm with which investors view our company and our business strategy going forward," Mr. Agolli continued. According to Agolli, this financing will allow the company to begin full-scale production at its emulsification unit in the coming weeks. The Company believes that it should begin generating revenue from emulsion processing in the current quarter.

"Most importantly," Agolli said, "we anticipate the completion and start up of our commercial scale upgrading facility, using our proprietary Sonoprocess™ technology. This technology has generated considerable interest from prospective customers, investors and partners based on demonstrations of the process operating in a batch mode at our pilot scale upgrading facility."

The Sonoprocess™ plant is located in Fier, Albania and will have the capacity to treat up to 1,000 barrels a day of heavy oil. With significant heavy oil production growth anticipated from the 8 billion barrels of oil reserves in Albania, Petrosonic expects to expand its facilities over the next 3-5 years to 15,000 bopd as Albanian oil production increases.

The Sonoprocess™ system uses low-frequency, high amplitude, high energy acoustic waves to separate the heavy oil so that the heavier fractions containing asphalt, sulfur and heavy metals can be easily removed, virtually eliminating the need for the costly diluent additives required in conventional upgrading processes.

"We have shown that we can reduce viscosity by up to one hundred percent, reduce concentrations of sulfur by forty percent and reduce heavy metals by seventy percent or more. The process improves the oil by as much as 5 to 10 points on the American Petroleum Institute (API) scale, yielding a more valuable product that can also be handled and transported at a significant savings. Furthermore, the separated asphaltines can be sold to asphalt producers.

"The ROI for these systems is expected to be significant," Agolli added. "As you can imagine, our customers are as excited as we are about the potential to achieve major savings in the handling and transport of heavy oil while at the same time increasing revenue from sales of higher quality product."

Petrosonic intends to generate revenue from owning and operating upgrading facilities based on its Sonoprocess™ technology, as well as through sales of systems, licensing of the technology and participation in joint venture and/or other profit participation partnerships.

According to Agolli, the Sonoprocess™ solution features a dramatically smaller footprint and can be delivered at a far lower capital cost per barrel of capacity as compared to conventional upgrading technologies that have proven not to be cost effective for smaller and medium size producers.