FieldPoint Petroleum: In The News...

AUSTIN, TX Dec. 14/PRNewswire

FieldPoint Petroleum Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: FPPC) announced today that the Company is featured in an article in the December 1998 Oil & Gas Investor Magazine, here is an excerpt from the article.

Ray D.Reaves created FieldPoint through a reverse merger in December 1997. (This is a merger between a private company and a public company where the private management team is the survivor.) Ten years ago, Reaves entered the industry as a pumper with North American Oil & Gas, which filed for bankruptcy 10 months later. He continued to manage the pumping operations for the company’s wells while it remained in bankruptcy.

In 1989 he formed his own company, Bass Petroleum, and began buying interests in the wells he was pumping. He has since acquired a 100% interest in the original 10 wells and interests in other wells in the field. His $900,000 investment has generated cash flow of $1.5 million and had a PV10 value of $1 million at year-end 1997. In September 1996, he bought a package of wells in Wyoming for $126,000. To date, the property has generated $185,000 in cash flow, plus Reaves expects another $1 million from the property. He also made another small production acquisition in Texas for $225,000 shortly after the reverse merger. Reaves owns 55% of the 4.4 million shares outstanding, which trade around $1.

Other than $45,000 in seed money from a few individuals and bank loans of about $1 million, of which $600,000 is currently outstanding, Reaves has bootstrapped the company using cash flow.

He may not have a long-term track record to attract strong financial backing, but Reaves is being closely watched and encouraged by some savvy industry players. Frank Bracken, senior E & P analyst at Prudential Securities Inc., New York, owns the stock personally even though FieldPoint is too small to be covered by his firm.

The reason, Bracken says, is simple: "The last five years have been very volatile and the last year has been very trying from a price standpoint, which created a lot of problems and financial insolvency amongst his peers (small-cap and Bulletin Board companies). Ray Reaves’ financial prudence and sophistication when it comes to paying the right price for assets have lifted him above all the trauma that has gone on out there.

He’s coming of age at precisely the right time, when the turmoil, and therefore, opportunity, is the highest. I’ve noticed a real acceleration in the number of quality deals Reaves is evaluating. He’s sticking to his strengths, which are field operations and engineering, and he seizes the opportunities but he hasn’t been over zealous. Reaves owns too much of the company to take any of them lightly."

Says Reaves, "With these low oil prices and the downturn the industry is facing, I see opportunity. There is a strong chance we’ll be able to double the asset base by year-end and be in a position to prosper once prices turn around. I am looking long-term. We’re going to stay focused and not get outside our bailiwick. We could have grown this company at a much faster rate, but I think we would have risked being severely affected by these low oil prices."

For Reaves to achieve his growth plans, he’ll need financing. "Our primary lender is Merchants Bank in Houston. We have a good relationship and I hope to expand our line of credit. We asked them to put us on a tight pay-back schedule, so we have paid down our debt pretty quickly. We are negotiating with a foreign bank about establishing a much larger line of credit of $10 to $15 million and we hope Merchants Bank will participate. We will focus on that in the first quarter of 1999.

For more information on the Company visit our website at www.fppcorp.com

Company Press Release
SOURCE: FieldPoint Petroleum Corporation