Vulcan Minerals Inc. Forms New Offshore Exploration Company

s, Newfoundland (PRWEB) July 19, 2006

St. John’ Vulcan Minerals Inc. (“the Company” TSX-V: VUL), the Company is pleased to announce that it has entered into an arm’s length agreement to merge its 50% interest in offshore exploration license 1098, Western Newfoundland with the license owners of the adjacent exploration license 1097 through the formation of a new private exploration company, NWest Energy Inc. (NWest). In return Vulcan will receive 30% of the outstanding shares of NWest making it the largest single shareholder. The remaining shareholders are the current private owners of the licenses, all of whom bring extensive expertise to NWest by virtue of their technical, marketing and financial skills. NWest will retain a management and consulting team to carry out its business plan. The immediate focus of NWest will be the compilation and interpretation of existing data on both licenses towards attracting joint venture partners. The licenses are currently covered by approximately 2000 line km of good to excellent quality seismic data. Given the buoyant energy market, NWest will be in a position to effectively market the petroleum prospectivity of its licenses.

Collectively, licenses 1098 and 1097 cover 640,000 acres of the Paleozoic Anticosti Basin. Several targets up to 150 square kilometres in areal size were seismically identified by a previous landowner. The larger targets exist in the foreland basin, an area that has never been drill tested in the eastern Gulf of St. Lawrence. The licenses are adjacent to the shoreline of Western Newfoundland where excellent petroleum source rocks and reservoirs occur on shore. For example, north of the licenses at Port au Choix, an uplifted and exhumed oil field has been geologically recognized in outcrop over an area of approximately 80 square kilometres with an inferred paleo-reservoir thickness of up to 100 metres. The Company believes that the offshore licenses have the potential to contain similar oilfields that remain buried within down thrown fault blocks. Maps locating the licenses and onshore geology are posted on the Company’s website (http://www.vulcanminerals.ca/). The relevant discussion is near the end of the slide show.

Licenses 1097 and 1098 were issued on January 16, 2006 and have a five-year initial term followed by a four-year secondary term if a well is drilled in the initial term.

The creation of NWest will allow a focussed and collaborative effort to advance exploration of the offshore licenses. The Company’s focus will remain the onshore Bay St. George Basin where field operations will re-commence this fall.

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