Mountain West Retirement Corp

CALGARY, ALBERTA - (MARKET - November 5, 2009) - Penn West Energy Trust (TSX: PWT.UN) (NYSE: PWE) is proud to announce its results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2009

Corporate strategy

- Penn West continued to focus on positioning the company to move from a trust to a corporate model before the end of 2011. In the future, we will primarily use a combination of organic growth and dividends to produce a return on capital that we can with other senior independent oil and North American gas producers. Before converting to an exploration and production company, we will continue our efforts on promoting our large-scale resource plays in our current range of assets. As our results to date are promising, we'll devote much of our budget for 2010 capital drilling horizontal multi-stage frac wells in our oil resource plays. Our goal is to apply this technology to increase production and reserves of these important resources with special emphasis on those short-term plays that focus on crude oil as Waskada, Dodsland, Pembina and Leitchville. It will expand our inventory of sites with a focus on risk reduction, while providing the kind of scale necessary to advance the company.

Operations

- Third quarter production averaged 178,124 (1) boe per day and was weighted 59 per cent of oil and natural gas liquids.

- Production for the first nine months of 2009 averaged 179,600 boe per day which is at the upper end of our forecast of approximately 175,000 to 180,000 boe per day. During the first nine months of 2009, Penn West had net provisions of approximately 3,000 boe per day.

- Crude oil and NGL production averaged 104,583 barrels per day and natural gas production averaged approximately 441 million cubic feet per day in the third quarter of 2009.

- Capital expenditures for development were $ 171 million in the third quarter of 2009, or 142 million net of $ 29 million from sale of net assets. During the quarter, we drilled a total of 36 net wells, including 29 horizontal wells fractions in several stages, with a success rate of 100 percent.

Earnings

- Funds Flow (2) of $ 349 million in the third quarter of 2009 was 19 percent lower than the $ 430 million in the second quarter of 2009 and 47 percent less than the $ 662,000,000 in the third quarter 2008. On a per unit basis (2) basic flow of funds was $ 0.84 per share in the third quarter of 2009 compared to $ 1.05 per share in the second quarter of 2009 and $ 1.73 per share in third quarter 2008. The decrease in funds flow from the second quarter of 2009 was due to $ 75 million of gains realized in the second quarter following the monetization of foreign exchange contracts.

- Net income was $ 7 million ($ 0.02 per basic unit) in the third quarter of 2009 compared to a net loss of $ 41 million ($ 0.10 per basic unit) in the second quarter of 2009 and a net profit of 1.062 billion dollars ($ 2.78 basic unit) in the third quarter of 2008. The significantly higher income last year was primarily due to unrealized gains on risk management on our oil and natural gas collars.

- Net income (2) $ 25.91 per BOE in the third quarter of 2009 was one percent higher than the second quarter of 2009 and 40 percent lower than in the third quarter of 2008. The decrease in 2008 is primarily attributable to lower prices.

- During the first nine months of 2009, net debt Penn West (2) was reduced by approximately $ 600 million (3).

(1) Please refer to the "Oil and Gas Information Advisory" below for information regarding the term "BOE".

(2) The term "flow of funds," funds flow "base unit" net income "and" net debt "are non-GAAP measures. Please refer to the Calc.