FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Wendy Hall or
August 3, 2000 Wendy Hagan
Halliburton Company
713.676.4371
Kim Pickett
Petroleum Place
303.268.6040
HALLIBURTON BROADENS ITS e-BUSINESS, INTERNET STRATEGY
WITH INVESTMENT IN PETROLEUM PLACE
DALLAS, Texas - Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) announced today that Halliburton
Energy Services, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement, pending final approval
from Petroleum Place shareholders, to acquire a 15 percent equity position in
Petroleum Place, Inc., a leading industry Internet company focused on the global
oil and gas property acquisition and divestiture (A&D) market. The deal is
valued at $55.15 million including cash and other considerations. Within the
agreement, Halliburton's wholly-owned subsidiary, Landmark Graphics Corporation,
will form a strategic alliance with Petroleum Place to provide online access to
relevant Landmark software for use in the A&D process, and will participate in
joint software development for Internet-based property evaluations. The combined
efforts of Halliburton, Landmark and Petroleum Place will create a formidable
competitor in the Internet-based A&D marketplace.
"A major focus for Halliburton's energy business is helping oil
companies optimize the life cycle management of their oil and gas reservoirs,"
said Dave Lesar, Halliburton Company president and chief operating officer. "The
property acquisition and divestiture process can be an important part of a
reservoir's life cycle, and often has significant inefficiencies in both cycle
time and transaction pricing. We believe these inefficiencies can be sharply
reduced with a new business approach enabled by the Internet, which is one of
the main objectives of the Petroleum Place alliance."
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The traditional method for discovering and evaluating properties
involves the collection of necessary reservoir data, followed by the
interpretation and analysis of that data to estimate a net present sale value.
This method can be extremely cumbersome, and manpower and resource intensive -
sometimes taking six to 12 months to complete. Once the alliance is established,
PetroleumPlace.com visitors will have the opportunity to quickly and securely
access a reservoir's relevant data using Landmark Graphics' software - reducing
or eliminating the physical data room phase and expediting the due diligence
process.
"A key Petroleum Place differentiator is its ownership of The Oil & Gas
Asset Clearinghouse and TradeBank, two of the leading companies in the auction
and A&D marketplace. Petroleum Place is leveraging and transforming these
established businesses to the Internet. One of the biggest obstacles to overcome
when establishing e-markets is the creation of liquidity. Petroleum Place,
through its established auction exchange, clearly has a head start in the
marketplace over those who are attempting to build their markets from scratch,"
said Bob Peebler, Halliburton Company's vice president of e-Business Strategy
and Ventures. "The Petroleum Place investment is yet another example of
Halliburton's desire to form e-ventures by virtually integrating with other
leading companies who have complementary expertise, rather than trying to build
everything ourselves."
Gary Vickers, president and chief executive officer of Petroleum Place,
commented, "Since the majority of the world's exploration and production project
data resides in Landmark's OpenWorks(R) digital format, our clients will have
the ability to leverage relevant data from OpenWorks(R) and other data sources
and use Landmark's interpretation and analysis tools to streamline their A&D
workflows. In addition, the alliance will allow us to leverage Halliburton's
global infrastructure, with offices throughout the world, to help accelerate
Petroleum Place's international expansion."
Petroleum Place, Inc. is an energy Internet marketplace serving the
upstream petroleum industry. The Petroleum Place Web site (www.petroleumplace.
com), which launched in 1995, seeks to bring price and process efficiencies to
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each stage of the oil and gas property transaction lifecycle - streamlining the
discovery, evaluation, acquisition, divestiture and processing of petroleum
properties. Petroleum Place provides a broad range of integrated,
Internet-enabled products and services supporting each stage of the acquisition
and divestiture life cycle including hybrid and exclusive online property
auctions (The Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse) and online oil and gas asset
databases (TradeBank).
Landmark Graphics Corporation is the leading supplier of integrated E&P
technical and economic software and services to support decision making about
finding, drilling and producing oil and gas. Knowledge-based E&P companies now
are turning to Landmark for technical-to-business (T2B(TM)) process integration
to improve the return on their investments. Visit the Landmark Web site at
www.lgc.com.
Halliburton Company, founded in 1919, is the world's largest provider
of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries. The company
serves its customers with a broad range of products and services through its
Energy Services Group and Engineering and Construction Group business segments.
The company's World Wide Web site can be accessed at http://www.halliburton.com.
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Note: In accordance with the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities
Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Halliburton Company cautions that statements in
this press release which are forward looking and which provide other than
historical information involve risks and uncertainties that may impact the
company's actual results of operations. Please see Halliburton's Form 10-Q for
the quarter ending March 31, 2000 for a more complete discussion of such risk
factors.
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