UTILX Corporation Announces Extended Opportunities for CableCURE Technology.

Business Editors/Technology Writers

KENT, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 12, 2000

UTILX Corporation (Nasdaq:UTLX) announced the publication of an independent research report by Reliant Energy (Houston Light & Power), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Cable Technology Laboratories (an independent testing laboratory). The technical paper, titled "Extending the Service Life of Ethylene Propylene Rubber Insulated Cable," was presented and published at the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Power Engineering Society (PES) winter meeting (January 2000) in Singapore.

The research documents with field trials and laboratory experiments that CableCURE(R), a proprietary technology of UTILX, improves performance of ethylene propylene rubber (EPR) insulated cables with a "significant increase" in dielectric properties that "prolong(s) their service life." There have been several generations of EPR formulations and the CableCURE technology was shown to work equally well with the entire range of formulations. Reliant Energy has been a user of CableCURE technology on polyethylene (PE) insulated cables for several years and supported the research to extend the approach to their EPR insulated cables. While EPR cables are generally considered to have longer life than PE cables, they ultimately suffer from a similar degradation of reliability. Together, PE and EPR are the two solid-dielectric materials that account for over 95% of all medium-voltage cables installed since 1980.

"I am very pleased that this independent work has demonstrated the efficacy of CableCURE technology on EPR cables," said Glen J. Bertini, Senior Vice President for Business Development of UTILX. "While CableCURE technology has been in use for over 13 years and has been proven 99.5% effective on polyethylene insulated power cables, this paper opens up new market segments for CableCURE, which have been largely ignored for lack of data. In the U.S., where UTILX has not pursued the EPR market, approximately 19% of the buried medium-voltage power cables and a majority of the cables in use in industrial power distribution are EPR. Together, these markets represent over 2 billion feet of EPR cable. Over 300 million feet were installed before 1980 and will soon be due for treatment or replacement. This paper has also prompted inquiries to our German-based European operations from Italy where the aging infrastructure is almost exclusively composed of EPR cables."

UTILX Corporation provides critical services for the installation and rejuvenation of aged underground infrastructure with its FlowMOLE(R) service and proprietary CableCURE solution in the U.S. and Canada through a network of regional sales and service centers. The Company also provides CableCURE services either directly or through licensees throughout Europe, Asia, and now South America.

This release contains forward-looking statements relating to the Company's existing and future products and services and future operating results that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. The words "believe", "expect", "intend", "plan", variations of such words, and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that the statement is not forward-looking. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Factors that could affect the Company's actual results include competitive pressures, levels of work received from key customers, weather, regulatory, other matters affecting the utility industry in general, and any matters that could cause sudden changes in customers' demand for the Company's services. The Company's contracts typically allow for cancellation on short notice. Reference is made to the Company's latest Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC for a more detailed description of such factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, events or circumstances after the date of this release or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.