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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery added 46 cents to $52.95 on the New York Merc, while Brent for February added 59 cents to $55.05 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $15.95 to WTI ($37.00), unchanged. Natural gas for January was unchanged at $3.54. The TSX energy index added a fraction to close at 223.92.

B.C. Montney producer Painted Pony Petroleum Ltd. (PPY) lost 19 cents to $9.18 on 438,000 shares. AltaGas, the operator of the Townsend plant, which is a 198-million-cubic-foot-a-day gas facility for which Painted Pony has secured the entire capacity, had good news to announce this morning: The B.C. Oil and Gas Commission (BCOGC) has approved AltaGas's proposal to double the Townsend plant's capacity to 396 million cubic feet a day. The doubling will begin with a 100-million-cubic-foot-a-day expansion that is expected to be finished next October. AltaGas is calling this expansion Townsend phase 2, and says it expects phase 2 to be fully contracted with Painted Pony under a 20-year take-or-pay agreement (akin to the 20-year agreement that exists for the first phase). On top of that, AltaGas says it has received BCOGC approval to retrofit the first phase from a shallow-cut facility into a deep-cut facility, allowing for the extraction of more liquids. These approvals "bode very well for continued and significant growth in northeast B.C.," declared AltaGas's president and chief executive officer, David Harris. That the approvals came so quickly is also encouraging. AltaGas had mentioned the phase 2 expansion plans in its third quarter SEDAR filings, which said the company would submit its application to the BCOGC in October, "with approval expected by the second quarter of 2017." Instead, the regulator has given a lovely Christmas present to AltaGas -- and, by extension, to Painted Pony. Painted Pony was of course well aware of the phase 2 proposal, and cheered it at length in a press release on Nov. 14, which pointed out that no one had previously expected an expansion to Townsend until mid-2018. With phase 2 being bumped up to October, 2017, Painted Pony said it would be able to produce 408 million cubic feet equivalent a day by year-end 2017, up from the previous target of 342 million. Those figures compare with the year-end 2016 target of 240 million.

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