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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for November delivery added 18 cents to $51.47 on the New York Merc, while Brent for December added 52 cents to $57.75 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $12.10 to WTI ($39.37), unchanged. Natural gas for November added four cents to $2.92. The TSX energy index added a fraction to close at 183.16.

Cenovus Energy Inc. (CVE) lost two cents to $12.49 on 7.1 million shares, giving back a fraction of the 29 cents it added yesterday after agreeing to sell its Palliser assets in Alberta for $1.3-billion. This was a higher price tag than investors had been expecting. Back in July, shortly after Cenovus first announced that Palliser was up for sale, anonymous sources told Reuters that the company was hoping to fetch up to $1-billion. That was seen as optimistic; various analysts had previously pegged the value of Palliser at several hundred million dollars. Cenovus did well to fetch a price of $1.3-billion. Evidently the buyers have high hopes for their new assets. These buyers are Torxen Energy, a private company led by John Brannan, and Schlumberger, which is a service company but has an existing joint venture with Torxen right beside Palliser, making Palliser a good fit. Torxen should also be a good fit as Palliser's operator. Before founding Torxen, Mr. Brannan spent 14 years at Cenovus and was its chief operating officer until his retirement in 2015. He will be familiar with Palliser and its current production of approximately 54,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day.

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