Bass Enterprises Purchases Horizon Exploration's Prospect Using Petris Technology's Internet Data Room

HOUSTON, August 3, 2000 - Horizon Exploration today announced the sale of their Smithers 3D prospect to Bass Enterprises, which used a PetrisX Internet Data Room to evaluate the prospect's relevant historical and technical information. The Smithers 3D prospect is the first PetrisX Internet Data Room property or prospect to be sold since the product's debut.

Horizon put the prospect "online" in February when Petris first introduced the Internet Data Room service. Bass became interested in it while viewing the Smithers 3D PetrisX Internet Data Room at April's AAPG conference in New Orleans. The rest is "virtual history."

Horizon Energy listed its prospect on PetrisX and other sites. Scott Silver, Horizon's Manager of Geophysics, said, "We received a little interest and got to first base with some of the people that saw our property on one site. But with PetrisX, we hit a home run. All the information about the prospect was right at the buyers' fingertips."

Seismic, well log, production history, land, lease, legal, environmental, pipeline, cultural, and financial data can all be uploaded by a seller to PetrisX's central server. Interested buyers can then download the information they wish to view, drilling into the depths of the data to evaluate a given property.

Bass Enterprise's Geologist, Tom McCarthy pointed out that having easy access to the Smithers 3D data through PetrisX helped his company understand the prospect faster and maintained their interest in it during the due diligence process. "Quite often explorationists travel across town or across the state to review a prospect only to find that it is not quite as the seller had described over the phone or in the executive summary. By viewing the key elements of the Smithers 3D prospect online, we were able to come to the conclusion quickly that it was something that warranted the time and expense of further evaluation."

PetrisX web-based services create an online Data Room that assists with asset management decisions, prospect and property valuations, and property transactions. Benefits include: reduced cycle times, lower transaction costs and improved valuation analysis.

Jim Pritchett, President of Petris Technology, Inc. said, "We are excited that we were able to help Horizon with its Smithers 3D prospect data room. We look forward to having continued success with Horizon. The benefits of an Internet based data room far outweigh the costs and outperform traditional data presentation methods."

PetrisX can be accessed from the WINDS Energy Information Mall available at www.petris.com.

Petris Technology, a Houston-based software and services company, is committed exclusively to assisting energy companies with the acquisition and management of critical information and the utilization of information technology to improve productivity within their enterprise. The company's primary lines of business include: Internet Energy Data Marketing, Data Room Software and Services, Data Management Software and IT/GIS Professional Services.