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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for August delivery added 45 cents to $45.49 on the New York Merc, while Brent for September added 22 cents to $47.74 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $9.75 to WTI ($35.74), unchanged. Natural gas for August lost six cents to $2.99. The TSX energy index added a fraction to close at 169.04.

Oil sands producer MEG Energy Corp. (MEG) added 24 cents to $3.72 on 3.06 million shares, struggling to regain some ground after its nearly non-stop slide from around $7 in the last three months. President, chief executive officer and co-founder Bill McCaffrey did his best to try to reverse the decline by giving a boosterish interview to the Financial Post last week. He emphasized the ways in which MEG and other oil sands producers are rising to the challenge of low oil prices. "We are becoming more efficient, we are becoming a greener barrel than a lot of other choices around the world, and there are a lot of studies that suggest that the world really wants Canadian oil and Canadian energy," he said. MEG's contribution is its proprietary eMSAGP (enhanced modified steam and gas push) technology, which the company says allows it to produce more barrels of bitumen using the same amount of steam. MEG has applied eMSAGP to about 40 per cent of its 80,000-barrel-a-day production. In a conference call in May, Mr. McCaffrey said the company will keep implementing eMSAGP over the next few years, during which time it will also aim to boost its production to as much as 113,000 barrels a day in 2020. He declared to the Financial Post that MEG is "hitting all the right cylinders."

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