<a href=new.stockwatch.com>stockwatch.com 2003-04-14 12:37 ET - News Release

LOS ANGELES, April 14, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Sonoran Energy, Inc. (OTCBB:SNRN) announced today that CEO John Punzo and Sonoran Energy, Inc. are now featured on MacReport.Net, a leading provider of online business and financial information, to increase the Company's exposure to the investor community at: www.macreport.net

Sonoran Energy has had a very positive recent history and is poised for growth and expansion. The MacReport.Net is an information and media company that provides a Web-based forum for public and private issuers to communicate corporate audio and video news content to the business, financial and investing community through its Web site, located at www.macreport.net. The MacReport.Net also plans to provide creative and production services to develop visual events ranging from live coverage of merger announcements to public relations campaigns to new product introductions.

Sonoran Energy recently announced that it has successfully reactivated eight of the 12 wells on its Emjayco Glide #33 Property and has started production. The Company anticipates reactivating four additional wells over the next 60 to 90 days. Sonoran also recently announced that it has acquired working interests in three natural gas producing properties in California's Sacramento Basin from Archer Exploration, Inc. Sonoran Energy has acquired varying percentages in the three properties that are producing 3,700 Mcf/day. These acquisitions increase the Company's natural gas production and reserves, and move Sonoran Energy closer to its goal of producing 2,500 to 5,000 Mcf/day. Through its partnership with Longbow LLC the Company intends to continue to make acquisitions over the next 12 to 24 months to reach this goal and enable the Company to become a producer of 1,000 to 1,500 BOE per day.

Domestic U.S. oil producers like Sonoran Energy, Inc. are positioned to significantly benefit from rising demand for U.S. domestic oil production in light of the brewing International oil production crisis due to war, strikes, and terrorist threats.

Just this month, the Nigerian subsidiaries of Royal Dutch/Shell Group (NYSE:RD) (NYSE:SC), ChevronTexaco Corp. (NYSE:CVX) and TotalFinaElf (NYSE:TOT) halted production totaling 817,500 barrels a day, or about 40% of Nigeria's output of some 2 million b/d amid violence between rival ethnic groups, the Ijaws and Itsekiri, leading up to April 19 parliamentary and presidential elections. Militant Ijaws reportedly threatened to blow up multinational oil installations they said they had captured in retaliation for government military raids. Additionally, oil-well firefighters from Houston-based Boots & Coots International Well Control (AMEX:WEL) are traveling to southern Iraq to assess damage in the country's key Rumaila oil fields. The firefighting teams are looking at a timetable of 30 to 45 days to extinguish the fires and cap the wells. But one source said the timing will depend on ``what's all there.'' The Pentagon has contacted a number of major oil industry service companies -- among them Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), once run by Vice President Dick Cheney -- to repair any of Iraq's wells that are damaged and assess everything from wells to pipelines and pumping stations.

Venezuela's oil industry collapsed in December, when employees at state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela walked off the job, angry about changes in the company under the administration of President Hugo Chavez. By the height of the strike, 16,000 employees had walked out, and production shrank to 200,000 barrels a day, costing Venezuela $6 billion. The country had to import fuel to keep vehicles moving, and drivers waited days at gas stations. The strike, which failed to oust Chavez or call early elections, was strongest in the oil sector, though businesses around the country shut down.

About Sonoran Energy

Sonoran Energy's primary objective is to identify, acquire and develop working interest percentages in smaller, underdeveloped oil and gas projects that do not meet the minimum requirements of major oil and gas corporations. Sonoran Energy's goal is to be recognized as a promising junior oil and gas producer.

Certain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the company, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements.

CONTACT: Sonoran Energy John Punzo (866) 599-7676 info@sonoranenergy.com www.sonoranenergy.com

Forbes.com Dan Ackman, 04.11.03, 8:57 AM ET

NEW YORK - The U.S. military capture of Iraq's northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul and the nearby oil fields has ended doubts that Iraqi oil would flow and eased oil prices in international markets. While the fate of Iraq's shattered economy is very much in doubt, U.S.-led forces are at least in control of the nation's oil wealth, which the Bush Administration has said it will deliver to the Iraqi people.

The Iraqis will need it. While no one knows what the cost of rebuilding Iraq will be, some in the administration have placed it at $20 billion annually for years to come. That figure would nearly exhaust Iraq's entire oil export revenue, assuming it sells 2.5 million barrels a day (slightly more than estimated exports in recent years) into the international market at $25 per barrel.

The war news led the price of London Brent oil to fall 32 cents to $24.15 a barrel. U.S. light crude dipped 36 cents to $27.10. These prices are about 10% lower than when the shooting war started and are substantially less than the near $40-per-barrel levels reached during prewar spikes; oil is still selling for more than it has in recent years. Between 1999 and 2002, the world price for oil averaged $23.20, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Whether Iraq will be able to tap its oil to pay rebuilding costs is not at all clear. The country is estimated to owe something like $60 billion to $100 billion to foreign creditors, and Kuwait is still seeking even more than that figure in reparations relating to the 1990 invasion.

Some oil traders see prices falling further with the war over--but OPEC, of which Iraq is a founding member (if not a participant in its councils in recent years), has other plans. "With all the Iraqi oil facilities now in allies' hands, there seems to be no threat to medium- or long-term Iraqi supplies and the market is marking that down," John Waterlow, oil analyst at Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh, Scotland, told Reuters. "I think there is more downside to the market."

But OPEC has said it wants to maintain prices at a minimum of $25 per barrel and may urge production cuts to do so. Such action would mean stopping the increased production it allowed before the war to ease fears or even new production quotas, OPEC President Abdullah al-Attiyah said yesterday.

But with Iraq on its way to rejoining the international community--meaning it can sell more oil--why haven't oil prices fallen fully back to their recent averages? After all, following the last Gulf War, oil prices fell sharply. But this post-war is different, says Tina Vital, Standard & Poor's oil and gas equity analyst, in a survey published yesterday. "Today's prices reflect more than war worries; they also reflect tight supplies." Even disregarding Iraq, supplies have been squeezed by disruptions in Venezuela and recently Nigeria. "By March 2003, U.S. oil inventories had reached a 27-year low of below 270 million barrels," Vital says.

Iraq can add to that supply, but how quickly and to whose benefit are open questions.

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<a href=www.infobrazil.com>InfoBrazzil by Ted Goertzel          Week of Apr 12- 18, 2003

Ted Goertzel is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. He is a former Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon (1968-73) and Visiting Instructor at the University of São Paulo (1967-68).  He holds a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio; an MA in Sociology and Latin American Studies from Washington University; and a PhD in Sociology from Washington University in St. Louis. A prolific writer, he has published numerous articles and books on Latin America and Brazil, and focused on several aspects and changes that took place in Brazil during the two consecutive tenures of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1994-1998 and 1998-2002). He is the author of “Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Reinvention of Democracy in Brazil” (Boulder, Lynne, Rienner – 1999), released in Portuguese in 2002 – an update for the original English language version is available on his website (see link below). More recently he published the essay “Does Zero Hunger Make Sense?”, and the article “So This is Lula?”, carried also by one of Brazil’s top dailies, Folha de S. Paulo.

Lula has a lot to apologize for. Instead of giving Brazil a shiny, new economic model, he simply warmed up former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's old one.

After eight years of attacking Cardoso's proposals to reform social security and taxes, he conceded that Cardoso was right after all. He announced a “Zero Hunger” campaign modeled on the American food stamp program, without mentioning that the previous administration under Cardoso had already instituted innovative anti-hunger and anti-poverty programs. In all the key policy areas – land reform, environmental protection, affirmative action, and foreign policy – Lula’s policies are almost indistinguishable from those introduced by Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

This may mean that Brazil has finally matured to the Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum stage of party politics, with a broad consensus on the major issues. No one wins an election by praising the other side, and Cardoso's popularity was so low that even his own party's candidate gave him only grudging recognition. Cardoso and Lula are old friends, going back to the long struggle against the military regime. They have similar goals for Brazil, and they are practical men who have no desire to go down in glorious defense of impossible dreams. After eight years in office, Cardoso left Brazil significantly better off than he found it. Lula will be doing well if he can say the same in four or eight years.

If this were merely a private matter between friends, there would be little need for an apology. They both understand political rhetoric, and Lula has expressed his appreciation of Cardoso's help in the transition. But a public apology would be good for the country. Not so much to correct the historical record, but to help Brazilians understand what happened to Lula's vision of a new economic and social model that would transform the country.

All through the campaign, Cardoso was frustrated because he could never pin Lula down on policy issues. Lula said he was against what Cardoso was doing, but he never explained what he would do instead. Would he renationalize industry or restructure the debt? How would he lower interest rates without increasing the debt and inflation? How would he increase salaries without increasing inflation? How would he implement and subsidize a more rapid land reform? In response to these hard policy questions, Lula just said that he would get together with the interested parties and negotiate. He never said what his own position would be.

Lula won the election without ever really answering Cardoso's questions. People were content to vote for images, without knowing exactly what policies would be used to implement them. The Workers Party's campaign centered on a meaningless slogan: "Another Brazil is Possible." Of course, many other Brazils are possible. And many of them would be worse rather than the one we have now. Brazil could rally around a populist demagogue like Venezuela or default on its debts like Argentina. A few in the leftover left would like Brazil to be a Marxist dictatorship like Cuba or North Korea. Almost everyone would like Brazil to be more like Sweden, but that will take a long time.

The question is not whether another Brazil is possible, but which of the many possible Brazils is most feasible. In my view, the best possibility for Brazil is to model itself on Chile. I don't mean the Chile of Allende or the Chile of Pinochet, but the democratic socialist Chile of the last fifteen years. Chile has cut poverty in half while raising everyone's standard of living and protecting human rights and democratic freedoms. Brazil could do the same. There is no great secret to Chile's success. It was achieved through four main policies:

• Working hard to maintain a political consensus, including sending important bills to the opposition parties for advice and consent;
• Reducing government expenditures so as to maintain a budget surplus and cut inflation;
• Increasing taxes to fund higher spending on education, health, youth training and housing for the poor;
• Greatly increasing the investment rate, including direct foreign investment;

This is more or less what Fernando Henrique Cardoso tried to do, and Lula is trying to do it even better. Brazil started down the right road ten years ago with the Real Plan. It made progress down that road, but it didn't get as far as it hoped. Lula hopes to go farther down the same road, and he will need all the help he can get. He will need people to be patient when he encounters roadblocks and detours along the way.

Fernando Henrique was less popular than Lula primarily because he told people exactly what he was doing. Lula won the popularity contest by offering vague promises and utopian visions. This is very much in the tradition of Latin American politics, and it certainly worked in the election. But it can be a recipe for disaster when people become disillusioned because the promises cannot be realized.

A public apology to FHC would correct the false impression that Lula has a revolutionary new model for Brazil – and the illusion that Brazil needs one.

See also: Does Zero Hunger Make Sense? by Ted Goertzel An essay published by Brazzil Magazine So This Is Lula? by Ted Goertzel English version on Brazzil Magazine, of an article originally published by the Folha de S. Paulo daily

Related sites: Ted Goertzel’s website crab.rutgers.edu

Zero Hunger Official website (Portuguese only) www.fomezero.gov.br

U.S. Food Stamp Program www.fns.usda.gov

Forbes.com-Reuters, 04.14.03, 9:44 AM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela, April 14 (Reuters) - Venezuela's Central Bank has lowered its discount rate for local banks seeking to borrow money to meet reserve requirements from 39 percent to 36 percent, the bank's Web page said Monday.

The discount rate cut was effective April 10. The Central Bank on Feb. 11 had lowered the rate to 39 percent from 42 percent.

The latest reduction came as leftist President Hugo Chavez's government continued to apply tight currency controls and price curbs to shore up international reserves and the country's bolivar currency.

The government put the controls, including a fixed exchange rate, in place in early February after a two-month opposition strike battered the economy and disrupted the oil exports that account for half of its revenues.

Access to U.S. currency was suspended for more than two months as the government fine-tuned the new control regime, and it has only recently started making limited amounts of dollars available for essential imports.

Chavez, a populist former paratrooper, has repeatedly called for the Central Bank to lower interest rates to compensate for the hard currency drought and keep inflation -- now running at an annualized rate of 34 percent -- in check.

04/14/2003 - Source: <a href=www.latintrade.com>LatinTrade-Business News Americas (BNamericas.com)

(BNamericas.com) - UK-Australian mining house Rio Tinto (LSE: RIO) has a budget of US$15mn-20mn for exploration in South America this year, a company executive told BNamericas.

"How much we ultimately spend will depend on how good the results are," said the official, Rio Tinto's regional exploration director Julian Bavin told BNamericas.

Last year, the company's exploration budget for the region started at US$17mn and ended at US$20mn, said Bavin, declining to provide further details of the program.

Rio Tinto's most advanced project in South America is its JV with Lima-based iron ore miner Shougang Hierro to explore for copper on Shougang's concessions near its Marcona mine in southern Peru's Nazca province.

"Exploration at Marcona led to the discovery of a significant iron oxide copper deposit," Rio Tinto reported in its 2002 annual report, providing no specific results. A source close to the company said it was still "early days."

The deal was initially signed on 14 December 2000 but modified and extended to take in an adjoining property last year, according to information filed with Lima's stock exchange by Chinese-owned Shougang Hierro.

Regionally, Rio Tinto's exploration activities - via its subsidiary Rio Tinto Mining and Exploration - are focused on Peru, Argentina, Chile and Brazil with offices in Lima, Mendoza, Antofagasta and Brasilia, respectively. However, it also looks at other countries such as Uruguay, French Guiana, Ecuador and Venezuela, either alone or as part of a joint venture.

Rio Tinto's assets in the region include the Paracatu gold mine and Corumba iron ore mine in Brazil and 30% of Escondida copper mine in Chile. It has just sold its 25% stake in the Alumbrera gold-copper mine in Argentina to Canada's Wheaton River Minerals (TSX: WRM). The London-based mining giant reported 2002 net earnings of US$651mn, after knocking off US$879mn for exceptional items.

Peru's only iron ore producer, Shougang Hierro posted net profits of 13.3mn soles (about US$3.81mn) in 2002, 149% up on 5.33mn soles in 2001.