Price Waterhouse introduces integrated system of petroleum industry client-server business solutions.

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 11, 1995--The World Petroleum Industry Group of Price Waterhouse Wednesday introduced a portfolio of proven oil and gas-specific integrated information systems that meet the business process, technology and information needs of petroleum companies ranging in size from major multinational organizations to middle market companies.

Price Waterhouse PinPoint Petroleum Performance Systems feature integrated client-server solutions for both upstream and downstream petroleum company business lines. PinPoint Performance Systems are largely proprietary to Price Waterhouse and have been developed in cooperation with the firm's oil and gas industry clients around the world.

The Price Waterhouse proprietary solutions are complemented in the Price Waterhouse PinPoint system with integrated applications from SAP -- whose R/3 client-server technology covers core financial functions, sales and distribution, materials management, production planning, maintenance and human resources -- as well as other leading industry software suppliers such as Munro Garrett and Landmark Graphics.

Price Waterhouse PinPoint Petroleum Performance Systems include:

-- Price Waterhouse FieldHand, an oil and gas field data capture system that handles daily, weekly and monthly production information including run tickets, well test data, well downtime, volumes and pressures, all with handwriting recognition.

FieldHand reduces data input errors by capturing accurate data at the source, reduces paperwork and cycle time and may be used with many technology platform alternatives, including laptops and hand-held, pen-based computers.

-- Price Waterhouse PREMAS Plus, an oil and gas production management system that manages volume determination, well tests, user-definable volume allocation, regulatory and partner reporting, producing property profiles and delivery networks.

PREMAS Plus is utilized by both operations and accounting personnel and satisfies the accounting needs of an operator. It allocates measured volumes to well completions based on user-defined allocation parameters on either a "what if" trial basis or final basis for oil, gas, water and many complex allocations such as gas lift gas, returned lease fuel, injection, load oil, high/low pressure gas, steam and downhole commingled wells.

Key information is "effective-dated" which enables automatic generation or prior-period adjustment notices for corrected volumetric data, downstream revenue processing and amended regulatory reporting.

-- Price Waterhouse PREMAS, a petroleum revenue management system which is unparalleled in automating the complex lease revenue process.

PREMAS' flexible structure allows an organization to work with the system, not around it, thereby taking advantage of their restructuring and reengineering opportunities and optimizing their closing cycles. PREMAS includes full division order and revenue contract administration, producer balancing, formula driven pricing and valuation, MMS and state tax and royalty reporting.

The revenue distribution process includes revenue accounts receivable, large volume royalty check generation and royalty relations support capabilities and takes full advantage of today's petroleum industry EDI capabilities.

PREMAS' full integration with the other Price Waterhouse PinPoint Performance Systems (Premas Plus, GasLink, and STARS), gives the user flexibility in handling required exception-oriented processing including complete effective-dating to permit the generation of prior-period notifications and automatic reprocessing.

-- Price Waterhouse GasLink, a natural gas management system covering contracts, trading, nominations, supply, pipeline balancing, netback pricing, accounts receivable and settlements that handles these integrated functions from both an operational and accounting perspective.

Price Waterhouse GasLink integrates communications between operations, marketing and accounting and helps avoid unnecessary penalties for pipeline imbalances, provides for identification of lowest-cost gas sourced to user transportation preferences and enables quick reaction to market volatility.

-- Price Waterhouse STARS, a petroleum trading, supply and distribution management system, supports inventory management, agreements, pricing and valuation, movements and logistics, settlements.

Price Waterhouse STARS optimizes inventory requirements, captures critical information at the source, integrates business processes and data, eliminates redundant activities and improves decision-making through consistent views of all operational information.

-- Price Waterhouse ACRUE, a client-server-based optical character recognition system, automates data entry of forms such as purchaser's check stubs, invoices, run tickets and JIB statements. The resulting output data format is user-defined (e.g., CDEX format for purchaser's check stubs) to integrate easily with existing systems.

-- Price Waterhouse petroleum performance improvement methods, tools and best practices such as Change Integration(R), ChangePro and KnowledgeView assist petroleum companies in strategic, organizational and process improvement projects.

Change Integration(R) is the Price Waterhouse change management and reengineering methodology which manages the extraordinary number of change initiatives being undertaken by today's petroleum company.

ChangePro, a windows-based, process mapping and analysis tool, allows the capture of metrics such as time, cost and resource requirements that form a sophisticated knowledge base for the change effort.

KnowledgeView provides Price Waterhouse petroleum clients around the world with the most progressive, up-to-date information on best practices available. Information within KnowledgeView is organized so that processes and related best practices can be viewed for petroleum specifically or across various industries.

All of these performance improvement tools are armed with petroleum-specific templates and examples that allow clients to get a fast start on their business improvement initiatives. When coupled with Price Waterhouse PinPoint Performance System solutions, they provide a powerful business performance differentiator.

-- Price Waterhouse, in a cooperative effort with SAP, is integrating the SAP R/3 software with these PW proprietary petroleum industry products to allow petroleum business transactions to flow smoothly throughout the PinPoint system.

Additionally, Price Waterhouse is developing industry-specific SAP templates for both the oil and gas and chemical industries. These templates are an advanced departure point for project initiation and prototyping and significantly contribute to reduced start-up and design costs.

The combination of Price Waterhouse's petroleum products and SAP R/3 functionality will offer the only complete enterprise-wide solution for the oil and gas industry, including upstream and downstream capabilities.

Strategic alliances with other companies form other parts of the Price Waterhouse PinPoint Petroleum Performance Systems. They include:

-- Munro Garrett International's ARIES (Advanced Reserves Information and Evaluation System), a solution that provides economic evaluation in a database environment for projects, acquisitions and company reserves, utilizing decline curve analysis.

-- Munro Garrett International's ARGUS, an easy-to-use Geographic Decision Support System that provides a dynamic link to corporate data. ARGUS combines the best features of both EIS and GDSS systems and supports multiple connections to different SQL corporate databases independent of database design.

"Price Waterhouse PinPoint Petroleum Performance Systems are all in today's preferred, client-server technology," said Rick Genovese, managing partner of the Price Waterhouse World Petroleum Industry Consulting Group.

"Our firm's global presence and experience in the petroleum industry coupled with our deep technical knowledge, proprietary systems, SAP implementation methodologies and state-of-the-art client-server systems combine to make the Price Waterhouse PinPoint Petroleum Performance Systems the most comprehensive in the international oil and gas industry," Genovese said.

"PinPoint Petroleum Performance Systems are standardized on the Oracle client-server architecture and have been developed with input from many of the leading petroleum organizations around the globe," said Charles Kafoglis, the Price Waterhouse partner responsible for Price Waterhouse PinPoint Systems development, support and marketing.

"We will build more Price Waterhouse-proprietary client-server oil and gas systems and we will form petroleum industry alliances with partners like SAP, Landmark and Munro Garrett who can add value to the total Price Waterhouse PinPoint program," said Kafoglis.

CONTACT: Price Waterhouse

              Rick Genovese, 214/754-8937 (Dallas)
              Tom Eubanks, 713/750-4783 (Houston)
              Charles Kafoglis, 713/750-3271 (Houston)
              Peter Powell, 713/658-3127 (Houston)
              Phil Caudill, 713/750-6067 (Houston) (Media)