NEWS RELEASE

April 17, 2009

Dean Slocum will participate as a panelist at the Offshore Technology Conference “Morning Report” from 7:30-9:00 on Tuesday May 5.  The session will focus on promoting local development, and Mr. Slocum has been invited to comment on Acorn International’s distinct “local content – global assurance” model and experience in applying this model in developing, oil-producing countries worldwide.  The session, entitled “Structuring Projects to Benefit Multiple Shareholders: How IOCs, NOCs, and Service Companies Can Collaborate to Create Shareholder Value and Promote Local Development” will also feature executives from a major oil and gas company, a national oil company and an international service company.

Dean’s message is integrated into the panel paper, to be published in the OTC Proceedings.  The main points are:

• One of the main challenges facing international oil and gas industry is meeting local content requirements, and developing local talent in host countries
• Traditionally, consulting firms and contractors have not organized themselves well to help industry meet this challenge
• Three years ago, a veteran of the international environmental/social risk consulting field developed a new business model designed to respond to this challenge – Acorn International was born.
• Acorn International uses its distinctive model to deliver “local content and global assurance” to several major and national oil and gas companies via a network of partnerships in 45 countries.

Companies relying on Acorn International and this model are satisfying corporate quality assurance and consistency needs while meeting their local content commitments, and at the same time seeing their investment in the Acorn model produce targeted capacity building that is helping develop the talent base in host countries for future projects.

Acorn International, LLC is a professional consulting services company dedicated to delivering world-class, affordable EHSS assurance and straight-forward results for overseas development projects.  The company operates not through a traditional consulting services model but by providing structured tools and guidance to qualified host-country teams, maintaining a link with international clients and building capacity in the host-country team. Acorn delivers:

1.       Established teams of local country experts partnered with and directed by an expert in assuring world-class EHSS assessment and management performance standards are met

2.       Advice to international industry needing to build world-class EHSS programs

3.       Recruitment and oversight/management of partners and service providers (EHSS and other) overseas

Working with Acorn allows international industries to better manage the increasingly delicate balance between meeting corporate requirements for reliable, simplified service while satisfying host-country demands for maximum local content.