Energistics and PPDM Sign Memorandum of Understanding

HOUSTON, TX and CALGARY, AB--(Marketwire - May 30, 2008) - The two key upstream industry open standards bodies, Energistics, based in Houston, and the PPDM Association, based in Calgary, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish reciprocal memberships and identify areas of cooperation. The MOU aims to ensure the organizations leverage each other's strengths for the benefit of the upstream oil and natural gas industry as a whole.

The PPDM Association and Energistics will identify standards development and deployment opportunities that appear to be among those suitable for joint sponsorship and/or joint member participation. One of the first areas the organizations, which together represent over 200 upstream industry companies, will explore is the development of connectors that would allow seamless data transfer between Energistics' PRODML™ standards for production data exchange and PPDM's Data Model for E&P information management.

"Internationally, industry is taking control of their information management strategies and deploying standards to manage and integrate data and information effectively," said Trudy Curtis, CEO and CIO of PPDM. "This MOU sets the stage for us to correlate the data management standards of PPDM and the data exchange standards of Energistics, thereby supporting effective information life cycle management strategies."

Commenting on the renewed cooperation, Jerry Hubbard, Executive Vice President of Energistics, said, "In the upstream standards community it has long been recognized that closer cooperation between standards organizations always results in greater efficiency for the industry. We believe this partnership will benefit the upstream oil and gas industry not only by advances in technology but also by creating greater efficiencies that lead to cost and time savings."

Energistics is a global, not-for-profit industry consortium that facilitates a neutral collaboration environment and an inclusive user community for the development, deployment and maintenance of open data exchange standards. These freely available, standards-based, collaborative technologies deliver technological, computing, data management and process solutions to the upstream oil and natural gas industry. Energistics membership consists of integrated, independent and national oil companies, oilfield service companies, hardware and software vendors, systems integrators, regulatory agencies and the global standards user community. For more information, visit www.energistics.org.

The PPDM Association is a global, not-for-profit standards organization that works collaboratively with industry to create and publish data management standards for the resource industry. Through the PPDM Association, worldwide petroleum data experts gather together in a collaborative, round table approach to engineer business driven, pragmatic data management standards that will meet industry needs. PPDM Version 3.8 is an open, practical and usable standard that is supported by over 100 members. For more information, visit www.ppdm.org.

Contact Information: ENERGISTICS CONTACT: Jerry Hubbard +1 (713) 294-4993 PPDM CONTACT: Trudy Curtis +1 (403) 660-7817