VANCOUVER, Dec. 14 /CNW/ - Westshore Terminals Income Fund (TSX: WTE.UN) (the "Fund") announced today that a cash distribution of $27,096,728 (representing $0.385 per trust unit) will be paid on or before January 15, 2006 to unitholders of record on December 31, 2005, as compared to $17,595,278 (representing $0.25 per trust unit) for the same period in 2004. For unitholder income tax purposes, it is anticipated that the distribution will be substantially all income, subject to usual year-end adjustments. For 2005, total distributions will be $1.165 per unit (100% from operations) as compared to $0.82 per unit in 2004 (of which approximately $0.70 was from operations and the balance from the sale proceeds of the Fording Canadian Coal Trust units then held). For the fourth quarter of 2005, Westshore anticipates that its tonnage throughput will be approximately 5.0 million tonnes and about the same as the fourth quarter of 2004. Tonnage throughput for the year is anticipated to be approximately 21.7 million tonnes compared to 21.3 million tonnes for 2004. For the 2006 calendar year, average settlement prices for metallurgical coal will, as in prior years, cover parts of two coal price years. For Q1 2006, the coal settlement prices will be as they have been for roughly the last 7 months of 2005. At this time it is unknown what coal settlement prices will be for April 2006 - March 2007 (which covers Q2 - Q4 of 2006). Following the Fording Canadian Coal Trust announcement on Wednesday, December 7, 2005 of lower forecasted coal volumes for 2006, based on information currently available to Westshore from all of its customers, throughput at Westshore for 2006 is now anticipated to be approximately the same as 2005 levels.