HOUSTON, May 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc. (Nasdaq: CRZO) today announced that its bank syndicate approved a $40 million borrowing base increase to its secured credit facility, raising it to $290 million. The existing bank syndicate also agreed to increase their credit commitments to the new borrowing base from $250 million to $259 million. Accordingly, several new banks have been invited to join the syndicate to provide commitments for the balance of the borrowing base increase. These banks are currently engaged in a review process that Carrizo anticipates will be completed in the next 20 to 30 days, after which the Company expects some of these banks to join the consortium.

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Chief Financial Officer Paul F. Boling stated, "We are very pleased to announce the approval of the $290 million borrowing base and firm credit commitments of $259 million from our bank syndicate. In this time of tightened credit availability with many companies seeing a reduction in their credit facilities, we believe today's announcement represents a firm vote of confidence in Carrizo's underlying asset base and business strategy. While we have no current plans to make use of this increase in credit availability in our projected 2009 capital expenditure budget, we welcome the additional capital flexibility."

Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc. is a Houston-based energy company actively engaged in the exploration, development, exploitation, and production of oil and natural gas primarily in the Barnett Shale in North Texas. Carrizo controls significant prospective acreage blocks and utilizes advanced 3-D seismic techniques to identify potential oil and gas reserves and drilling opportunities. Carrizo also controls large acreage positions in other productive shale resource plays including in the Marcellus and Fayetteville.

Statements in this news release that are not historical facts, including but not limited to those related to confidence of Carrizo's banking syndicate in Carrizo's assets and business strategy, financial flexibility, 2009 capital expenditure budget and credit commitments from additional banks are forward-looking statements that are based on current expectations. Although Carrizo believes that its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that these expectations will prove correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include market and other conditions, capital needs and uses, the banks' evaluation of Carrizo and its proved oil and gas reserve base, commodity price changes, effects of the global financial crisis on exploration activity, results of and dependence on exploratory drilling activities, operating risks, land issues, weather, and other risks described in Carrizo's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2008 and its other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    Contact:  Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc.
              Richard Hunter, Vice President of Investor Relations
              Paul F. Boling, Chief Financial Officer
              (713) 328-1000

SOURCE Carrizo Oil & Gas, Inc.