QUEBEC CITY, QUEBEC -- (Marketwire) -- 12/14/10 -- Junex (TSX VENTURE: JNX) announces that the Junex Villeroy No.1 exploration well has reached 1,708 meters, that the coring of the Utica Shales has been completed, that well logs have been run and that intermediate casing has been cemented in the well. Many intervals saturated in natural gas were encountered during the drilling of the well, of which 5 intervals were cored between the depths of 840 and 1,264 meters. A total of 16.4 meters of core was recovered and will be subsequently analysed in order to allow the estimation of the volume of gas-in-place resources on Junex's acreage located in the structured portion of the Utica basin, approximately 15 km from the St-Edouard No.1H horizontal well.

Located in the structural extension of the St-Flavien natural gas field that produced from Beekmantown Formation dolomites, Junex will proceed to drill the Junex Villeroy No.1 well to an estimated depth of 2,000 meters in order to reach a conventional target in the Trenton-Black River and Beekmantown formations. No fracturing operations are foreseen over the short term for the Junex Villeroy No.1 well.

"The Villeroy No.1 well is the first well to be drilled on our sizeable Lyster Permit Block, and the gas shows encountered in the Utica Shales are very promising. The results from the core analyses should allow us to evaluate the potential gas-in-place resources in this area over the upcoming months and to determine our future investment strategy. With the main objective of evaluating the Utica Shales through the recovery of core samples now being complete, we will now drill deeper in order to test a seismically-defined conventional target." declared Mr. Jean-Yves Lavoie, President of Junex.

The Villeroy No.1 well is the first well to be drilled on the 108,000 acre-sized Lyster block of permits that is held at 100% by Junex.

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