ALTACANADA ENGAGES CIBC WORLD MARKETS INC. AND CASES FIRST MONTANA WELL

CALGARY, Oct 1 /CNW/ -- 
      PRESS RELEASEOCTOBER 1, 2010TSX-V SYMBOL: ANG
    

      CALGARY, Oct 1 /CNW/ - AltaCanada Energy Corp. (the "Corporation")
      announces that its Board of Directors has decided to undertake a review
      of strategic alternatives and has engaged CIBC World Markets Inc.
      ("CIBC") as its financial advisor to assist in the review process.
    

      AltaCanada has over 390,000 gross acres of contiguous lands in northern
      Montana adjacent to existing oil production in the Shaunavon and Bakken
      Formations currently being pursued in Montana, North Dakota and southern
      Saskatchewan by various other operators. AltaCanada and CIBC have
      prepared a corporate summary document that is available on CIBC's
      website (http://www.cibcwm.com/wm/investment-banking/industry-expertise/oil-gas.html).
    

      The corporate sale of AltaCanada is only one of several alternatives
      under consideration. The refinancing of the Corporation's debt as well
      as merger and joint venture opportunities will also be examined in order
      to maximize shareholder value and enable the Corporation to accelerate
      its attractive Jurassic and Bakken drilling opportunities.
    

      Drilling operations on the first of two scheduled wells in Blaine
      County, Montana have been completed, with the East Battle well cased as
      a potential Shaunavon oil well.  Completion operations are scheduled to
      commence in one week. The second well will spud on October 4, 2010,
      targeting the Bakken formation.
    

      The Corporation is engaged in the acquisition, exploitation and
      production of crude oil and natural gas reserves in Western Canada and
      Montana.  For more information on the Corporation, visit www.altacanada.com.
    






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table cellspacing="0" valign="top" border="0"tr valign="top"td align="left" /td td valign="top" align="left"Don Foulkes, President & CEO/td td valign="top" align="left"Don Jackson, Exec VP & COO/td/tr tr valign="top"td align="left"Telephone:/td td valign="top" align="left"[phone] (ext 248)/td td valign="top" align="left"[phone] (ext 234)/td/tr tr valign="top"td align="left"Fax:/td td valign="top" align="left"[phone]/td td valign="top" align="left"[phone]/td/tr tr valign="top"td align="left"Email:/td td valign="top" align="left"a href="mailto:[e-mail]"[e-mail]/a/td td valign="top" align="left"a href="mailto:[e-mail]" cr="true"[e-mail]/a/td/tr/table

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