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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery, the benchmark in North America, lost 73 cents to $75.78 on the New York Merc, while Brent for January, the international benchmark, lost 68 cents to $79.68 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select, Canada's heavy oil benchmark, traded at a discount of $17.30 to WTI ($58.48), down from a discount of $16.85. Natural gas for December, the international benchmark, lost 11.5 cents to $4.15. The TSX energy index lost 5.46 points to close at 261.25.

Ithaca Energy Inc. (IAE) lost two cents to $1.45 on 1.02 million shares. Its 55-per-cent-held Greater Stella area project in the North Sea looks to be facing yet another delay. This project, which is supposed to add 16,000 net barrels of oil equivalent a day to Ithaca (compared with third quarter production of about 11,600 barrels a day), has had its production date pushed back a few times from the original target of mid-2014, mainly because of infrastructure delays. The most recent target, set in May and repeated by Ithaca in its third quarter update on Nov. 13, is mid-2015. Today, however, 20-per-cent-co-owner Petrofac indicated that work is behind schedule. Petrofac is in charge of refitting Stella's floating production facility. The vessel was supposed to move from Poland to the Stella field long before the end of this year, so as to avoid sailing during the turbulent North Sea winter, but Petrofac said in May that it would have to delay departure to the spring of 2015, hence the mid-2015 target for production. Petrofac repeated mid-2015 in a news release on Oct. 17. In a news release today, it said it now expects production in the third quarter of 2015. Some of Ithaca's investors may have expected this. Management warned of possible "timetable slippage" during an analyst-only conference call in August, as wrote Canaccord Genuity analysts Charlie Sharp and Thomas Martin, who pushed back their own production target to the fall of 2015. Ithaca's third quarter conference call two weeks ago was more optimistic -- it said work toward the mid-2015 target was "so far so good" -- but evidently a fall start date is also possible.

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