DropDown within a Datalist

Hi,

I'm stuck on problem regarding a dropdown within a datalist and hope someone can help.
Within the datalist I have a number of drop down's and text box's populated from queries. The text boxs get populated fine but the dropdowns throw up this error

Object reference not set to an instance of an object

my code behind page for populating one of the dropdowns is :

Dim dReader As System.Data.OracleClient.OracleDataReader

If Not Page.IsPostBack Then
OracleConnection1.Open()
dReader = OracleSelectCommand2.ExecuteReader
Status.DataSource = dReader '****this line throws up the error****
Status.DataTextField = "pen_userid"
Status.DataValueField = "pen_id"
Status.DataBind()
dReader.Close()
OracleConnection1.Close()
End if

The aspx page for the dropdown :

<form>
<asp:datalist id="DataList1" runat="server">
<ItemTemplate>
<TABLE id="Table4" border="0">
<TR>
<TD>
<asp:dropdownlist id="Status" runat="server" Width="152px" autopostback="True"> <asp:dropdownlist>
</TD>
</TR>
</ItemTemplate>
</asp:datalist>
</form>

I'm using VB.NET..Any help would be much appreciated and I look forward to the replies.

Rgds
DSG