Calgary, Alberta -- Questerre Energy Corporation 
("Questerre" or the "Company") (TSX,OSE:QEC) is 
pleased to announce that its partner, Red Leaf 
Resources Inc. ("Red Leaf"), reported that it has 
cleared a major regulatory hurdle and will soon launch 
the first commercial-scale oil shale production in 
North America in decades. 

Michael Binnion, President and Chief Executive Officer 
of Questerre, commented, "We are very pleased that Red 
Leaf has secured the necessary regulatory approvals to 
begin field work for their first commercial scale 
capsule. This is a first. We are very pleased with the 
work done to achieve it."

Red Leaf reported that the Utah Division of Water 
Quality today issued a Groundwater Discharge Permit to 
Red Leaf, which the company sought despite not 
producing any discharge water. In 2012, Red Leaf 
received a Large Mining Operation permit from the Utah 
Division of Oil, Gas & Mining, contingent upon 
issuance of the discharge permit.

"We are pleased to finally have the major permits 
required to move forward with construction of our 
commercial demonstration project, which will produce 
more than 300,000 barrels of oil and prove our clean 
oil shale technology works on a large scale," said Red 
Leaf Chief Executive Officer, Adolph Lechtenberger. In 
2009, Red Leaf successfully completed a pilot project 
on its lease holdings in Eastern Utah, from which it 
successfully produced more than 300 barrels of oil.

Red Leaf currently holds oil shale leases on school 
trust lands in Utah, which will be developed under a 
joint venture with the French energy conglomerate 
Total S.A. Red Leaf has additional oil shale leases on 
land leased in Wyoming, which will be developed under 
a joint venture with Questerre.

"Red Leaf has more than 20 U.S. patents for our 
EcoShale technology, which extracts oil with lower 
energy consumption, lower emissions, lower water use 
and less environmental impact than any oil shale 
technology deployed in the world today." Lechtenberger 
continued, "The EcoShale process was specifically 
designed to address traditional environmental 
challenges of oil shale production."

"Not only do we have less environmental impact, our 
oil is of much higher quality than traditional oil 
shale production, equal to or better than the industry 
benchmark of light sweet West Texas Intermediate 
crude," said Lechtenberger.

Oil Shale VS Shale Oil

Oil shale is often confused in the media with shale 
oil and shale gas production. When traditional oil and 
gas is extracted from shale rock formations like those 
in North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Texas, it is 
correctly called shale oil and shale gas, not oil 
shale. This extraction process involves drilling for 
the resource.

By contrast, oil shale development is the process by 
which a solid organic material rich in hydrocarbons 
called "kerogen" is converted to crude oil, condensate 
and natural gas through the application of heat. All 
traditional oil and gas was once kerogen. Over tens of 
millions of years, heat from the earth's core caused 
deposits of kerogen to transform into oil and natural 
gas. Modern oil shale production simply speeds up the 
natural process of turning kerogen into oil and gas, 
either by mining the ore and heating it at the surface 
or heating it underground (in-situ). EcoShale is a 
surface mining and processing technology.