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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery, the benchmark in North America, lost 63 cents to $92.66 on the New York Merc, while Brent for October, the benchmark in Europe, lost 62 cents to $99.37, its first time below $100 since June, 2013 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select, Canada's heavy oil benchmark, traded at a discount of $13.85 to WTI ($78.81), up from a discount of $14.05. Natural gas for October, the international benchmark, added 8.3 cents to $3.87. The TSX energy index lost 4.75 points to close at 310.65.

Athabasca Oil Corp. (ATH) lost 21 cents to $7.15 on 4.86 million shares, after releasing a long-awaited budget update and announcing that its chief executive officer of seven years is stepping down. The new budget partly reflects a $1.18-billion asset sale payment from PetroChina that finally arrived on Aug. 29, two months after it was originally expected. Athabasca is using some of the proceeds to increase its 2014 budget to $667-million from $527-million. The extra money will mainly go toward the Alberta Duvernay, where the company has increased its budget to $291-million from $145-million, including $203-million to be spent in the second half of the year. Despite this extra spending, Athabasca is keeping its second-half production guidance at 6,000 to 6,500 barrels of oil equivalent a day. This is because wells in the tight Duvernay play need a while to become productive. They must be shut in for a length of time, called the soak period, to allow the formation to absorb load fluid pumped into the wells, making the hydrocarbons mobile enough to reach the surface. Athabasca is budgeting for a soak period of three months. As a result, new wells are not expected to have much production effect until late 2015. Once they are on production, though, Athabasca says the results will be significant. It plans to drill 26 wells before the end of 2015 (on top of the eight it has already drilled), and although just 15 of those will be on production by year-end 2015, Athabasca is forecasting total Duvernay production by then of 12,000 to 14,000 barrels a day. Overall year-end 2015 production is estimated at 15,000 to 20,000 barrels a day. Although Athabasca's management is optimistic about the Duvernay, and talked about it at length during a conference call this morning, shareholders may be disappointed that the company has yet to arrange a joint venture. It had previously said that several companies were interested but would not commit while the PetroChina payment was uncertain. Management said today that the search is still on, but Desjardins analyst Justin Bouchard is not so sure, writing in a note to clients, "The company has indicated that the Duvernay could be a self-funding asset [within three to four years] -- perhaps a precursor to going it alone?"

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