This item is part of Stockwatch's value added news feed and is only available to Stockwatch subscribers.

Here is a sample of this item:

by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery lost 12 cents to $48.19 on the New York Merc, while Brent for July lost 35 cents to $48.93 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $11.70 to WTI ($36.49), up from a discount of $12.45. Natural gas for June lost 4.7 cents to $2.001. The TSX energy index lost 3.17 points to close at 183.16.

EnCana Corp. (ECA) added 19 cents to $9.74 on 17.5 million shares, on top of the 37 cents it added yesterday as it hosted a "Montney investor event" in New York. The subject was the B.C./Alberta Montney, one of EnCana's four core plays. The other three are the Alberta Duvernay, the Texas Eagle Ford and the Texas Permian, and the four of them together are receiving over 95 per cent of this year's roughly $950-million budget and produced over two-thirds of EnCana's first quarter production of 383,400 barrels of oil equivalent a day. The Montney contributed nearly 160,000 barrels a day during the quarter. This production -- which is very low cost, emphasized EnCana at the investor event -- consisted of 826,000 million cubic feet a day of gas and 22,300 barrels a day of oil and natural gas liquids. EnCana said at the investor event that its 10-year plan is to more than double the gas production to about 1.8 billion cubic feet a day and more than triple the oil/liquids production to about 75,000 barrels a day. In the nearer term, by 2018, EnCana wants to boost the gas production to one billion cubic feet a day and more than double the oil/liquids production to 50,000 barrels a day. EnCana reckons it can achieve these ambitious targets, particularly on the oil/liquids front, because it is in the "highest-quality" part of the play, with thick reservoirs and plenty of condensate. To put it in perspective, the company said yesterday that it has 10,000 drilling locations in the Montney, of which 3,600 are in the "condensate" category and 3,000 are in the "superrich condensate" category. (To put that in perspective, EnCana's estimate last summer was that it had 5,000 Montney locations, of which 1,500 were rich in condensate. Evidently both the inventory and the percentage of condensate-rich locations have roughly doubled in less than a year.)

The remainder is available to Stockwatch subscribers.
Sign-up for a FREE 30-day Stockwatch subscription and SEE NO ADS