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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

After a quiet postholiday trading session, U.S. markets closed early as America went shopping for Black Friday bargains. West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery lost $1.90 to $46.06 on the New York Merc, while Brent for January lost $1.61 to $47.24 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $15.50 to WTI ($30.56), unchanged. Natural gas for December added seven cents to $3.09. The TSX energy index lost 3.59 points to close at 213.27.

Ithaca Energy Inc. (IAE) had a frustrating day, losing 17 cents to $1.40 on 1.16 million shares, after announcing yet another delay to its Stella project in the North Sea. This project, which is expected to boost Ithaca's production to a range of 20,000 to 25,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from approximately 9,000 barrels a day, was supposed to start producing roughly 2-1/2 years ago, in mid-2014. It has been delayed so many times that most investors have lost count. Things seemed to look up in August, when the floating production facility (FPF) finally started its sail-away to the Stella field. Based on Ithaca's estimate that it would take about three months after sail-away to achieve production, it looked as though the hydrocarbons would start flowing in November. Depending on how long the ramp-up to full production took -- mere weeks, most likely -- Ithaca could reasonably aim for a year-end boost to its production and cash flow, as well as a strong start to 2017. The company was visibly confident about "nearing [a] material step change in the business" when it announced on Nov. 14 that everything was on schedule for start-up at the end of November. Now cruel fate has intervened once more. This morning, Ithaca glumly announced that inspections of the electrical junction boxes on the FPF had turned up multiple problems that will require weeks of repair. This has pushed the start-up target into January. Ithaca, scrabbling about for a silver lining, offered weak noises about having proved "the value of a thorough inspection program," but investors were unmoved. There will be no year-end production boost after all, and full production from Stella will likely not be achieved until February at the earliest.

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