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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for March delivery lost 56 cents to $31.72 on the New York Merc, while Brent for April lost 58 cents to $34.46 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $14.65 to WTI ($17.07), up from a discount of $15.50. Natural gas for March lost 6.6 cents to $1.972. The TSX energy index added 1.09 points to close at 155.09.

Oil sands producer MEG Energy Corp. (MEG) reached an intraday high of $5.95 before closing at $5.41, unchanged, on 5.96 million shares. This morning it released mixed fourth quarter 2015 results and nearly halved its budget for 2016 without touching its production guidance. The quarterly results had some good news: Production came to 83,514 barrels of oil equivalent a day, slightly ahead of analysts' predictions of 83,000 barrels a day. Even so, operating loss for the quarter came to 62 cents a share, instead of analysts' predictions of just 57 cents a share. Other updates took some of the sting out of that disappointment. Notably, MEG has chopped its 2016 budget to just $170-million from $328-million without changing its production guidance of 80,000 to 83,000 barrels a day. Investors and analysts had expected a cut, but this is a pleasingly large one, considering that MEG had indicated in December that it would need closer to $230-million to hold production steady. More recently, just last week, RBC Capital Markets analyst Greg Pardy wrote that he had met with senior executives of MEG (chairman and chief executive officer Bill McCaffrey and IR man John Rogers) and came away with the impression that MEG would reduce its budget to around $225-million. The actual reduction to $170-million reflects nicely on MEG's cost-cutting efforts.

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