News Release

Released: September 22, 1998  Contact: Michael Bernard  899-6500 or (BC only) 1-800-373-6393

Vancouver -- The president and sole director of a company who sold shares in the company without being registered or filing a prospectus has been fined $25,000 and stripped of his trading rights for 15 years by the British Columbia Securities Commission.

In a decision released recently, a Commission panel also prohibited Daniel William Fisher from acting as a director or officer of any company or engaging in investor relations activities for 15 years and ordered him to pay the costs of the hearing.

The panel was told Fisher was sole shareholder, director and president of Western Horizontal Drilling Inc., a company in the business of purchasing interests in oil and gas leases and then selling fractions of those interests to investors.

One of the leases in which WHD held an interest was a well in Texas called Johnson No. 2. Between December 1990 and November 1991, WHD sold fractional interests in the well to 28 investors, 24 of them B.C. residents.

Fisher placed advertisements in The Province and Vancouver Sun newspapers to promote the scheme. One of the ads promised a 700 percent return on invested capital in less than 80 days and claimed a 1990 track record of seven wells averaging 800 barrels of oil a day.

"Fisher was the directing mind of WHD and must be held responsible for the company’s complete disregard for the requirements of the (Securities) Act," the Commission panel said. "He dealt with the investors who purchased WHD’s securities and he caused the company to place advertisements respecting its securities that contained blatant misrepresentations, including ludicrous projected rates of return.

"As a result of Fisher’s actions, 28 investors lost between $300,000 and $400,000 US and the capital market in British Columbia was brought into disrepute."

The British Columbia Securities Commission is a provincial government agency responsible for regulating trading in securities and exchange contracts.

Copies of the Commission decision (6 pages) may be obtained in person at #200-865 Hornby Street, Vancouver, British Columbia.

The decision can also be accessed through the British Columbia Securities Commission website address: http://www.bcsc.bc.ca.