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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery added 53 cents to $49.19 on the New York Merc, while Brent for December added 47 cents to $51.27 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $14.00 to WTI ($35.19), unchanged. Natural gas for November added six cents to $2.97. The TSX energy index lost a fraction to close at 200.37.

Penn West Petroleum Ltd. (PWT) lost one cent to $2.42 on 3.05 million shares. It has appointed David French as its new president and chief executive officer, replacing Dave Roberts, who had been in the position for a little over three years. Mr. Roberts joined Penn West in June, 2013, about six months after stepping down from his previous position as chief operating officer of Marathon Oil. His departure, as one Morningstar analyst wrote, "seems a bit surprising, given the fact that Marathon has been ... moving in a positive direction." The same could arguably be said of Penn West. The stock has more than tripled from January's low of 70 cents as the company overhauled its balance sheet and operations. This year alone, mainly through asset sales, it has reduced net debt to less than $500-million from over $2-billion. Following the sales, it dubbed its balance sheet "fixed" and patted itself on the back for completing this phase of its "transformation plan." The second and final phase will involve selling the rest of its non-core assets, which are producing about 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, in order to focus on its core Alberta assets, which are producing about 25,000 barrels a day. (For context, when Mr. Roberts joined the company, production was 140,000 barrels a day.) This second phase is expected to be completed by year-end. Investors might have expected Mr. Roberts to stick around until then at least, especially in light of a BNN interview he gave just eight weeks ago, when (in response to a question about whether his time at Penn West has been "fun, as well as hard work"), he said, "Yeah, I don't think you could ask for a better assignment than this. ... [I'm] really looking forward to the future of the new Penn West." It turns out that the future will not involve him. What he is looking forward to now, as he said in today's press release, is "watching David [French] and the Penn West team take the baton and surge forward to a bright future."

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