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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery added $1.43 to $52.25 on the New York Merc, while Brent for March added $1.46 to $55.10 (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $14.05 to WTI ($36.77), unchanged. Natural gas for February lost six cents to $3.22. The TSX energy index lost a fraction to close at 213.29.

Alberta Montney player Front Range Resources Ltd. (FRK) plunged 40 cents to 48 cents on 1.77 million shares, after releasing the results of its 3-26 exploration well, the first well of its initial two-horizontal-well drill program at its new Pepper project. The program began in October and was touted by the company as "high impact." The term turned out to be apt, but, unfortunately, only in the sense that evokes images of a car crash.

The 3-26 well was not complete failure and in fact made a gas discovery, if not a particularly impressive one. Over the last two days of an 11-1/2-day test, the well flowed at an average of five million cubic feet a day. That works out to just over 830 barrels of oil equivalent a day. To put that in perspective, Front Range's production in the third quarter of 2016 was 169 barrels a day (mostly from a gas property called Fir). In addition, the 3-26 well was finished on time and on budget. Front Range did not mention the final cost, but it had budgeted $7.1-million, according to the prospectus for a $22-million financing that was done in September. The financing consisted of 21.4 million common shares at 70 cents and 8.6 million flow-through shares at 81 cents, boosting Front Range's total share count to 54.8 million. Most of the proceeds were earmarked for the two-well program at Pepper.

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