Sonoran Energy Forms Joint Venture with Iraq Partners.

Energy Editors/Business Editors

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 16, 2004

Sonoran Energy, Inc. (OTCBB: SNRN) President and CEO Paul Bristol announced today that the Company has hired the first employee and consultant for its joint venture with its Iraqi oil and gas partners. Joining the partnership is one of the top geologists in Iraq Said Hmoud Dhiab Al-Ani. Mr. Said Hmoud, a petroleum geologist and most recently Resident Manager for RNGS-OPT Consortium for Overseas Petroleum Trading, will lead the joint venture's geological operations from its offices in Baghdad. Also joining the joint venture as a consultant is Mahmoud Ahmed, who retired from the Iraqi Oil Ministry in 1997 to join the private sector as a consultant, and is currently president of Himrin Petroleum Services Bureau in Baghdad. Mr. Ahmed is a petroleum engineer with extensive connections in the oil and gas business in Iraq.

"We are extremely pleased to have secured two of the top oil industry experts in Iraq to select the most profitable oil and gas locations for the joint venture," said Paul Bristol, who has just returned to London after a week in Baghdad. "They are the first two members of the team that intends to build the joint venture into Iraq's premier independent oil and gas company. Given their extensive relationships with the Iraqi Government the joint venture will have access to the highest quality oil and gas fields in the country. Sonoran Energy will own 49 percent of the joint venture with our Iraqi partners owning 51 percent."

Mahmoud Ahmed has worked in the Iraqi oil fields since 1962. As a petroleum engineer he has held several positions with the Iraqi Oil Ministry including Manager Petroleum Engineering for the Ministry in Baghdad. He was also General Manager of the Iraq Drilling Company in Baghdad and worked as a petroleum engineer for the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC).

Said Hmoud Dhiab Al-Ani has been an external examiner for the University of Baghdad and was a member of the joint Iraqi Turkish/Iraqi Italian Committees for Evaluation of the North Iraq Oil Fields. He was also Team Leader with Tunisian Enterprise for Petroleum Activities (ETAP) and for the past two years was a consultant with the Arab Petroleum Training Institute (ATPI), OAPEC.

About Sonoran Energy

Sonoran Energy's primary objective is to build itself into a major oil and gas corporation concentrating mainly in Iraq but with a background of developing oil properties in North America.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected on the basis of such forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are made based upon management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management pursuant to the "safe-harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.