While I welcome the most recent update by Connacher managment on the current state of affairs at Algar and POD 1 as many of you do as well, thank you Connacher management; to me the latest press release by Connacher is neutral and it should have produced little effect on the share price.

The press release stated that POD 1 will be producing an average of 8,000 bbl/d of bitumen for the rest of 2009. This is not the 9,500 bbl/d average production level that Connacher should be at right now. So let's not get carried away that this is something new and great. In reality this is just getting production at POD 1 back to where it was months ago, before the water purification problems began. While the current production figures at POD 1 given as between 7,500 bbl/d to 8,500 bbl/d are reassuring, I don't see anyone running out to buy a lot of new shares based on stabilizing a past production plateau and not reaching the 9.500 bbl/d production capacity.

The only really new information in the press release was that the 17 well pairs drilled at Algar came in with a $10 million dollar saving. This is indeed good news because if Algar continues to come in under budget then the $15 million dollar contingency set aside in the 2010 capital program when added to this $10 million dollar saving will mean that Connacher has $25 million dollars extra in the bank when Algar is completed. In terms of being ahead of schedule at this point, the press release stated that Connacher will begin the 90 day steaming process at the end of April or early May which means that the project will be completed around the end of March or early April (30 day break in period before the 90 day steaming) so it appears Algar is ahead of schedule a bit but I don't see any of this affecting the share price at this point. So why did the shares go up on high volumes last Thursday and Friday? It's not because of the news which in my humble opinion is netural.

Smoke and mirrors by the mm's (money market people). Yes the share price went up before the press release came out, before the public shareholders were aware of the contents of the press release. But mm's mainly traded among themselves on huge volume. This trick induced a lot of common shareholders to sell their shares lower to the mm's which they sucked up and then they sold them to new shareholder's at $1.22, who thought this is it, Connacher is on a roll and it's going up to $1.50 immediately, I have to get in now. Yes the stampede was managed and volumes of 7 million and 14 million shares appeared on Thursday and Friday But in the end, the 35 biggest share holders of Connacher common shares still have their shares and the total number of shares owned by the institutionals is still around the same today at 167, 338,247 according to Reuters: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/financialHighlights?symbol=CLL.TO

Smoke and mirrors and everybody gets sucked in. During this time I would go online on Thursday and Friday without Level 2, and I would type in CLL and see 999 bid and 999 ask at any price that appeared for large parts of the day. This didn't happen a year ago or two years ago. This is a relatively new phenomenon. Talk about controling the price and the market and creating huge walls. The mm's are not your friends. Smoke and mirrors. Not much new.

Best Wishes; Scott