SALT LAKE CITY, April 4, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- American Sands Energy Corp. (OTCBB:AMSE) ("AMSE" or the "Company"), an oil sands exploration and development company operating in Utah, announced today it has completed the purchase of its pilot plant used to demonstrate its water-free extraction of bitumen, or heavy oil, from leased oil sands deposits it intends to mine. The agreement with Elemax, Inc. included a combination of cash and stock to purchase the trailer-mounted mobile oil recovery system.
The pilot plant, which the Company has successfully used to process up to one ton of oil sand per hour over multiple days, will be used by American Sands to evaluate other opportunities for hydrocarbon recovery projects while the Company moves towards initial production at its Sunnyside location.
"We are pleased to complete the purchase of our trial production unit," said Will Gibbs, Chairman and CEO. "The pilot plant has historically been used by AMSE to demonstrate the efficacy of our technology, which uses no water, consumes 60 percent less energy than traditional oil sands mining operations, requires no tailing ponds and produces no toxic byproducts."
Gibbs added that, going forward, "In addition to the pilot plant being the engineering model for our initial planned 5,000 barrel-per-day plant in Utah, we also plan to work with industry partners around the world that can utilize our scalable technology to extract oil from solid materials such as oil sands, oil shale and other substances."
A video of the pilot plant in operation is available for viewing at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz1-3z__A8o
About American Sands Energy Corp.
American Sands Energy Corporation is a development stage Delaware company with primary operations in Utah. The Company has acquired rights to oil sand ore covering approximately 1,800 private acres of prime oil sand deposits in the Sunnyside area of Utah. The Company has an extraction and recovery system using a licensed proprietary solvent that separates oil and other hydrocarbons from sand, dirt and other substances without creating tailing ponds and other environmental hazards. For more information, visit www.americansandsenergy.com.
Forward Looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements regarding AMSE's future plans and expected performance based on assumptions the Company believes to be reasonable. A number of risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, including, without limitation, the success rate of business development efforts, exploration efforts and the timeliness of development activities, the ability to place the project into full production; the ability to secure all necessary mining permits in a timely manner, fluctuations in energy prices, confirmation of estimated resources, and other risk factors described from time to time in the Company's reports filed with the SEC. In addition, the Company operates in an industry sector where securities values are highly volatile and may be influenced by economic and other factors beyond the Company's control. American Sands Energy Corp. undertakes no obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.