Two oil and gas trusts with steady yields

Article Excerpt

ENERPLUS RESOURCES FUND $24.50 (Toronto symbol ERF.UN; Units outstanding: 166.0 million; Market cap: $4.1 billion; SI Rating: Extra Risk) is one of North America’s largest oil and gas trusts. Its production is 60% of natural gas and 40% oil. Enerplus continues to build a well-diversified portfolio of properties. It aims to balance these between low-risk, shorter-term assets that generate steady cash flow (such as conventional oil and gas and shallow-gas properties), and higher-risk, longer-term assets (including shale gas and oil sands). The trust’s long-term debt of $713.7 million is just 17.4% of its market cap. It pays out only around 55% of its cash flow as distributions, and yields 8.8%. Ottawa will start taxing income trusts in 2011. However, Enerplus has over $2.5 billion in tax losses that it can use to delay its conversion to a dividend-paying corporation until 2013 or later. Enerplus recently paid $164.4 million U.S. for a 21.5% stake in 540,000 acres in the Marcellus shale-gas region of the…