Pacific Ethanol, Inc Announces Delay in Reporting First Quarter 2008 Results

Sacramento, California, May 9, 2008—Pacific Ethanol, Inc. (NASDAQ GM: PEIX) today announced a delay in the filing of its Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2008. As a result, the Company will file a Form 12b-25 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an automatic extension of time to file the Form 10-Q and will make the filing by May 19, 2008.

The Company previously announced that it would release its first quarter 2008 results and hold a live conference call on Monday, May 12, 2008.  As a consequence of the delay in the filing of the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, these events have been rescheduled to Monday May 19, 2008.  Therefore, the Company announced that it will release its first quarter 2008 results pre-market on Monday, May 19, 2008. The Company will host a live conference call and webcast at 10:00 AM EDT / 7:00 AM PDT on Monday, May 19, 2008. Neil Koehler, Chief Executive Officer, and Joseph Hansen, Chief Financial Officer, will host the call.

Please check back for details of the call, webcast and replay.

Pacific Ethanol is the largest West Coast-based marketer and producer of ethanol.  Pacific Ethanol has ethanol plants in Madera, California; Boardman, Oregon; and Burley, Idaho and has an additional plant under construction in Stockton, California.  Pacific Ethanol also owns a 42% interest in Front Range Energy, LLC which owns an ethanol plant in Windsor, Colorado. Central to Pacific Ethanol’s growth strategy is its destination business model, whereby each respective ethanol plant achieves lower process and transportation costs by servicing local markets for both fuel and feed.  Pacific Ethanol’s goal is to achieve 220 million gallons per year of ethanol production capacity in 2008 and to increase total production capacity to 420 million gallons per year in 2010.  In addition, Pacific Ethanol is working to identify and develop other renewable fuel technologies, such as cellulose-based ethanol production and bio-diesel.

With the exception of historical information, the matters discussed in this press release including, without limitation, Pacific Ethanol’s belief that it will complete construction of the ethanol plant in Stockton within the next 14 months, Pacific Ethanol’s belief that the area’s concentration of cattle is sufficient to consume the expected wet distillers grain output from the plant to be located in Stockton and that the plant’s location will provide affordable access to fuel markets in California, and that Pacific Ethanol will have in excess of 220 million gallons of annual production capacity by mid-2008, are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The actual future results of Pacific Ethanol could differ from those statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, the ability of Pacific Ethanol to conform to the funding and other requirements of its recently completing debt financing; the ability of Pacific Ethanol to successfully and timely complete construction of its ethanol plants in Boardman, Oregon, Burley, Idaho, Calipatria and Stockton, California, the ability of Pacific Ethanol to timely complete, in a cost effective manner, its ethanol plant build-out program and to successfully capitalize on its internal growth initiatives; the ability of Pacific Ethanol to operate its plants at their planned production capacities; the price of ethanol relative to the price of gasoline; and those factors contained in the “Risk Factors” section of Pacific Ethanol’s Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 12, 2007.