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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery added 23 cents to $53.99, while Brent for March added 21 cents to $57.10 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $16.00 to WTI ($37.99), unchanged. Natural gas for February added one cent to $3.28. The TSX energy index lost a fraction to close at 220.89.

Whitecap Resources Inc. (WCP) lost 21 cents to $12.24 on 1.48 million shares. It had enjoyed a good start to the year, adding a total of 29 cents on Tuesday and Wednesday, but it ground to a halt yesterday and reversed course today, despite yesterday's announcement of better-than-forecast production in the fourth quarter. Whitecap had been aiming for fourth quarter production of 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. Instead, it produced 50,600 barrels a day, thanks to "exceptional" drilling results in Saskatchewan.

The results in southwest Saskatchewan were particularly encouraging, with 12 of Whitecap's 13 wells exceeding their production models by 50 per cent. Southwest Saskatchewan is a new area for Whitecap. It dipped not its toe but its whole leg in last May, when it agreed to buy an 11,600-barrel-a-day set of assets from Husky Energy Inc. (HSE) for $595-million. This was one of 2016's boldest deals in Saskatchewan at the time, although it would soon be overtaken by Teine Energy's $975-million acquisition of the Saskatchewan assets of Penn West Petroleum Ltd. (PWT: $2.69) in June, and then by Spartan Energy Corp.'s (SPE) $700-million acquisition of the Saskatchewan assets of ARC Resources Ltd. (ARX: $22.47) in December.

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