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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery, the benchmark in North America, lost 14 cents to $59.25 on the New York Merc, while Brent for June, the international benchmark, lost 48 cents to $64.91 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select, Canada's heavy oil benchmark, traded at a discount of $8.40 to WTI ($50.85), unchanged. Natural gas for June, the international benchmark, lost 7.8 cents to $2.80. The TSX energy index lost 2.16 points to close at 224.54.

Enerplus Corp. (ERF) lost 43 cents to $13.35 on 1.37 million shares. On Friday, it released its first quarter financials, which suffered from a $267-million impairment charge on U.S. assets. As well, cash flow in the quarter came to just 53 cents a share, sharply below analysts' predictions of 71 cents a share. The difference was mainly because of low realized prices as well as one-time expenses such as rig terminations and severance payments. Operationally, it was a slow quarter. Production of 100,900 barrels of oil equivalent a day was up from 98,800 barrels a day in the first quarter of 2014, but down from 105,600 barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2014. The quarter-over-quarter decrease in part reflected deferrals at the Bakken/Three Forks properties North Dakota. Enerplus delayed nearly all well completion activity in North Dakota from late November until the end of February, waiting for prices to recover. That gave it a backlog of 18.8 drilled but uncompleted wells at the end of the quarter. During a conference call on Friday, management said the normal backlog for this time of year would be four to six wells. These wells generally flow about 1,000 barrels a day in their first month, so if prices are worthwhile, Enerplus should able to boost production fairly significantly. "So what we're doing right now is figuring out how many of those [wells] do you want to bring on," said president and CEO Ian Dundas. The second quarter will definitely see an acceleration in completions compared with the first quarter. As a result, despite the slow first quarter and a recent 1,900-barrel-a-day asset sale to Bonterra Energy Corp. (BNE: $35.34), Enerplus is keeping its full-year production target at 93,000 to 100,000 barrels a day. In fact, as Mr. Dundas said optimistically, "Over all, we're on track to meet and possibly exceed all of our 2015 guidance targets." Investors did not seem convinced.

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