Introduction
The Merritt project is comprised of two packages (996 hectares) of contiguous coal properties covering most of the known Merritt coal field, and is located 250 Km east of Vancouver in southern British Columbia. Forum has private title to the mineral and petroleum rights over a 505 hectare parcel of freehold land.

Unlike many of the province's remote interior coal fields, Merritt is characterized by excellent infrastructure. Coalbed methane (CBM) development at Merritt offers potential for direct sales into local domestic and industrial markets or to Terasen whose pipeline servicing the Vancouver metropolitan area and U.S. export markets passes just west of the project area.

Geology
The Merritt coal filed consist of up to ten coal seams containing high volatile bituminous B rank coal which occur in the Eocene Coldwater Formation (Princeton Group) and are interbedded with sandstone, shale and conglomerate. Although the seam numbers and thicknesses vary across the Merritt coalfield with seams lensing out into shale laterally, the formation generally contains about 22 meters of coal within a 250m section (MINFILE No 092ISE058 BC Ministry of Energy Mines and Petroleum Resources).

Historical Work
The Merritt coal field has had a long history of mining. Approximately 2.6 million tons of thermal coal was produced from shallow underground mines between 1906 and 1944 from at least seven known seams with an aggregate thickness of +25 metres. The British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines estimates a resource of 300 million tonnes of high volatile bituminous C to A rank coal.

There is no quantitative CBM data at Merritt, but the Ministry of Energy and Mines has estimated a potential resource of 52 BCF.

Proposed Work
The Company proposes a bore hole designed to recover samples for coal quality and gas desorption testing. The borehole will penetrate the full stratigraphic interval of coal measures, and provide a basis for assessing the full CBM potential of the Merritt Coalfield.