The pilot facility, which is based in Phoenix, Arizona, has been operational since early July. Approximately 80 tons of the company’s oil sands were shipped to the facility, which has been able to run at its designed rate of up to two tons per hour, generating consistent flows of oil and clean, dry sand over multiple, consecutive days of operation.

American Sands is developing its oil sands operation outside of Price, Utah, where it currently has rights to more than 2,000 acres of oil sand deposits. At full production, AMSE expects to produce 50,000 barrels of oil per day, employing conventional underground mining and an extraction and recovery system using a proprietary solvent. The extraction system consumes no water in its process.

The Utah oil sands are “oil wet”, which allows us to extract the bitumen while neither consuming water in the process nor producing waste water as a byproduct. This is a key differentiator between us and more traditional oil sand companies.

—Andrew Rosenfeld, company President

American Sands Energy Corporation was formerly known as Millstream Ventures, Inc. That company acquired GreenRiver Resources Corp., a privately-held company that controlled approximately 1800 acres of oil sands property in Carbon County, Utah. Through the GreenRiver acquisition, the company also acquired exclusive use in Utah of the proprietary extraction process.