PrimeWest Energy Trust Announces Filing Date of Information Circular and Effect of Canadian Federal Government Budget ProposalS CALGARY, March 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- (TSX: PWI.UN; PWX; NYSE: PWI) - PrimeWest Energy Trust (PrimeWest) today announces that its Notice of Meeting, Proxy and Information Circular for the upcoming May 6, 2004 Annual General and Special Meeting of Unitholders is expected to be filed on the System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval (SEDAR) in Canada, and on the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system in the United States on March 30, 2004. The Information Circular outlines the resolutions to be voted on by Unitholders at the Meeting, including a proposal to amend PrimeWest's declaration of trust to provide the board of directors of PrimeWest with a measure of flexibility in determining when to enforce restrictions on ownership of Trust Units by, and transfer of Trust Units to, non-residents of Canada. PrimeWest has reviewed its current level of non-resident ownership and has determined that, as of March 22, 2004, more than 50% of its trust units were owned by non-residents. PrimeWest continues to qualify as a mutual fund trust by way of an exception in the Income Tax Act,however, one of the measures introduced in the Canadian federal government's budget address on March 23, 2004 would effectively eliminate that exception, with the result that PrimeWest now has until January 1, 2007 to comply with the requirement that it not be maintained primarily for the benefit of non-residents. PrimeWest intends to pursue alternatives over the coming two and a half years to mitigate the impact of this change. Two additional measures relating to trusts were introduced in the budget which are not expected to impact PrimeWest Unitholders. The first limits the level of investment by pension funds in business income trusts after 2004. This measure should not impact PrimeWest Unitholders as PrimeWest, being the direct and indirect holder of Canadian resource properties, is not considered a business income trust for the purposes of this limitation. The second proposes to extend the existing non-resident withholding tax to include the return of capital portion of distribution, not just the "taxable income" portion. With the exception of Unitholders with trust units held in tax sheltered accounts, all of PrimeWest's non-resident Unitholders have received their distributions net of the withholding tax amount, so the proposed changeis not expected to impact the amount of distributions received by Unitholders each month. PrimeWest's Annual General and Special Meeting of Unitholders will be held on May 6, 2004 at 2:00 pm Mountain time in Room Glen 206 of the Telus Convention Centre located at 120 - 9th Ave SE Calgary, Alberta. For the live webcast and / or replay, interested users of the internet are invited to go to http://www.newswire.ca/en/webcast/viewEvent.cgi?eventID(equal sign)702460 or access the webcast at the PrimeWest website, http://www.primewestenergy.com/. PrimeWest is a Calgary-based conventional oil and gas royalty trust that actively acquires, develops, produces, and sells natural gas, crude oil, and natural gas liquids for the generation of monthly cash distributions to unitholders. Trust units of PrimeWest are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol "PWI.UN" and on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "PWI". Exchangeable shares of PrimeWest Energy Inc. are listed on the TSX under the symbol "PWX". Learn more about PrimeWest on our Web site, http://www.primewestenergy.com/. DATASOURCE: PrimeWest Energy Trust CONTACT: George Kesteven, Manager, Investor Relations, 403-699-7367, Toll-free: 1-877-968-7878, Cindy Gray Investor Relations Advisor 403-699-7356, e-mail: ; To request a free copy of this organization's annual report, please go to http://www.newswire.ca/ and click on reports@cnw.

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