May 24, 2000

Dear Mr. Sand:

Confirming our telephone conversation of yesterday, please be advised that I had a telephonic conference with the Patent Examiner in charge of the pending patent application for the BAFI device at the United States Patent & Trademark Office. The Examiner has confirmed that he will allow all 20 claims of the above reference application in our telephone conference.

As such, I have the happy task of notifying you that the patent application will issue as a United States Patent in the near future. I will be submitting formal drawings and a written amendment pursuant to the Examiner and my telephonic conference in the next week. As a general rule it takes about 60 to 90 days for the patent to actually issue once we receive allowance from the Examiner. As such, I would anticipate that the actual patent should be issued some time in August or September.

Also in confirmation of our telephone conversation of yesterday, this letter is to confirm that we have applied to the Office of the Patent Cooperation Treaty to secure the right to file the patent in foreign countries throughout the world. We have designated all of the countries who are treaty members at this point in time. This will allow you and your staff to decide which countries you wish to prosecute the patent to issuance at a later date while still securing the right to file in foreign countries using the United States priority date.

Please feel free to contact me with questions or comment, and congratulations on the allowance of the patent on the tank monitoring device.

Looking forward to working with you on this and other matters in the future, I remain,

Sincerely yours,

Donn K. Harms