Friday, November 7, 2003

COMPANY PRESS RELEASE

Spartek Systems receives CRC/ASTECH Award for "Innovation in Industrial Research"

Calgary, Alberta, Canada - November 7, 2003:

The Alberta Science and Technology (ASTech) Leadership Foundation acknowledged the recipients and winners of 13 separate award and prize categories at its annual black-tie gala which recognizes notable Albertans for their outstanding achievements in science, technology and research.

This prestigious event, now in its 14th year, attracted over 1,000 leaders and influencers from government, academia, industry and business - all in celebration of the leaders of today and tomorrow.

The ASTech awards and prizes are among the highest honors available to individuals and organizations in Alberta's science and technology community. Each year, alternating between Edmonton and Calgary, the Foundation holds the black-tie gala where recipients of the awards and prizes are recognized for their innovative achievements. The gala allows the science and technology community and related sectors to gather and celebrate accomplishments in their particular fields.

Spartek Systems is an Alberta success story based on a company's understanding of customer needs and ability to develop better products to meet those needs. The company manufactures geophysical instrumentation for the worldwide petroleum sector.

Founded in 1994 in Sylvan Lake, Spartek invested heavily in its early years to make pressure gauges with software that would change the market. Its first product was a pressure gauge that used quartz transducer technology to produce high-quality, reliable data. The company followed up with a proprietary sapphire-based pressure gauge using the latest signal processing technology to further improve performance at a lower price. The product quickly captured the market in Canada.

Spartek Systems is now a multinational company with $14 million in annual revenue and over 80 employees worldwide. The privately held company has an engineering and manufacturing facility in Sylvan Lake and offices in Venezuela, the United States, the Middle East and the Far East.

The company designs, develops and manufactures instrumentation for reservoir characterization and for diagnosing problems in the reservoir or wellbore. Products include quartz and sapphire pressure gauges, wellhead pressure recorders, multi-cycle shut-in tools, production logging tools and surface acquisition loggers. The company sells, leases or rents its products, as well as provides repair and maintenance services.

Spartek's team is known for its agility in moving from a client's idea to a test product, sometimes in as little as two weeks. New products underway include a pressure gauge that is reliable at high temperatures and a system that can be permanently installed in subsea wells for remote monitoring and control in real time.

Spartek intends to use the NRC/ASTech Prize to hire an electrical/mechanical engineering graduate student on a project to develop a tool for non-destructive inspection of downhole well casing. The new Spartek tool represents an advancement in a technology that has not changed significantly in 20 years and will help Spartek enter the corrosion monitoring market.

The company plans to market the technology to service companies in the U.S., Latin America, North Sea, Middle East, Russia, China and other major oil and gas producing areas where fields are maturing and the market for such services is significant. Commercialization of this technology is expected to create at least 10 new jobs on the manufacturing side and 10 on the well service side.

Pictured From Left to Right: Dr. Michael Raymount, VP Technology and Industry Support, NRC, Graham Moorhouse Spartek Vice President, Rebbeca Bystrom CRC, Mathew Schmidt Spartek C.E.O., Bob Brown Spartek President,

SPARTEK specializes in providing the oil and gas industry with high quality data to monitor well performance and diagnose potential problems. The company’s center for research and development, and manufacturing is located in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, with sales and support centers in Canada, United States, Venezuela, China, Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific regions. The products developed by the company include quartz pressure gauges, sapphire pressure gauges, well head pressure recorders, production logging instrumentation, and surface acquisition loggers.