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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for July delivery lost 67 cents to $50.56 on the New York Merc, while Brent for August lost 56 cents to $51.95 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $12.15 to WTI ($38.41), unchanged. Natural gas for July added 14.9 cents to $2.617. The TSX energy index lost 2.76 points to close at 191.33.

Colombia-focused Gran Tierra Energy Inc. (GTE) added 17 cents to $4.43 on 4.22 million shares, on top of the 21 cents it added yesterday after announcing victory in an arbitration against the Colombia's national hydrocarbons agency, the ANH. The dispute had to with the HPR (high-priced rights) royalties payable on production from Gran Tierra's Moqueta field on the Chaza block. As Gran Tierra tells it, under the terms of its contract for Chaza, the HPR royalty became payable only after Moqueta produced its five millionth barrel. That happened on April 30, 2015, and at that point Gran Tierra started paying the royalty. Yet the ANH said the royalty was actually due from the very first barrel produced, and was thus demanding over $90-million (U.S.) in payments from Gran Tierra. It also claimed that Gran Tierra had breached the Chaza contract by failing to make the payments and that the contract should be terminated. The matter went to arbitration nearly 3-1/2 years ago, and yesterday, Gran Tierra announced that the tribunal had ruled in its favour. Curiously, the announcement appeared only briefly, and rather vaguely, at the bottom of a press release that was largely about a new peso hedging program. The program is expected to protect about $36-million (U.S.) in cash flow from June, 2016, to May, 2017 -- a fine thing, but investors were doubtless more pleased by the arbitration outcome.

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