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ARC Energy Trust Conference Call to Discuss New Gas Discoveries and Increase to 2008 Budget - Final.

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Original Source: FD (FAIR DISCLOSURE) WIRE

OPERATOR: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Dawson area land acquisition conference call.

At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time for you to queue up for questions. (OPERATOR INSTRUCTIONS). I would like to remind everyone that this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. John Dielwart, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

JOHN DIELWART, PRESIDENT, CEO, ARC ENERGY TRUST: Thank you and thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning for this conference call to discuss our recent developments in our Dawson core area and the increase we have announced in our 2008 budget. With me today I have Myron Stadnyk, Chief Operating Officer; David Carey, Senior VP, Capital Markets; Ingram Gillmore, our VP of Engineering; and Yvan Chretien, our VP of Land.

Before getting into the meat of this call, I must caution listeners that this call contains forward-looking statements as to the Trust's internal productions, expectations or beliefs relating to future events or future performance. In some cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as may, will, should, expects, projects, plans, anticipates and similar expressions. These statements represent management's expectations or beliefs concerning, among other things, future capital expenditures and future exploration, development and operating results and various components thereof. The projections, estimates and beliefs contained in such forward-looking statements are based on management's assumptions relating to the production performance of ARC's oil and gas assets, the cost and competition for services throughout the oil and gas industry in 2008 and beyond, and the continuation of the current regulatory and tax regime in Canada, and future exploration development results and necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including the business risks assessed or discussed in management's discussion and analysis in ARC's annual information form, which may cause actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, listeners are cautioned that events or circumstances could cause results to differ materially from those predicted.

Now for the good stuff. At ARC, we have long held the view that resource plays are the future of the conventional oil and gas business in Western Canada and we have intentionally positioned ourselves with large land holdings in shallow gas, natural gas from coal, tight gas and large conventional oil fields amenable to enhanced oil recovery, particularly with carbon dioxide. The Montney tight gas play in northeast British Columbia has become one of the hottest resource plays in Western Canada and one that we have developed considerable expertise in throughout our development of the Dawson gas field. The December 12 land sale set all kinds of records and it was all based on sales in this Montney area where we are right in the heart of it.

ARC's expertise in the Montney began with our acquisition of the Ante Creek oil field in Alberta in 2000 and was accelerated with the 2003 acquisition of Star Oil and Gas, which included the Dawson Montney gas field in northeast B.C.

Since 2003, we have been pushing the envelope and applying innovative drilling and completion technology in an effort to decrease the cost and increase the productivity of the wells. In 2005, ARC introduced horizontal drilling combined with a new completion technique, which have not been used before in Canada. These techniques are now the norm for development of the Montney in northeast B.C. We were at the forefront of that and we continue to push that envelope.

We have experienced significant success at Dawson, which is now producing 44 million cubic feet at day of gas, an 80% increase over production levels at the start of 2007, and we have significant behind-pipe capacity that still exists...

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