Exxon Sinks $600 M Into Algae-based Biofuels in Major Strategy-Shift

July 14, 2009

...Exxon is joining a biotech company, Synthetic Genomics Inc., to research and develop next-generation biofuels produced from sunlight, water and waste carbon dioxide by photosynthetic pond scum...

..."We're not claiming to know all the answers," said Craig Venter, founder and CEO of Synthetic Genomics, which has so far done early work on algae strains. "There are different approaches to what is truly economically scalable, so we're testing things and giving a new reality to the timelines and expectations of what it takes to have a global impact on fuel supply."...