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by Stockwatch Business Reporter

West Texas Intermediate crude for October delivery (new front month) added 23 cents to $87.06, while Brent for October added 61 cents to $94.39, notching a decisive weekly gain as traders awaited details of new U.S. sanctions against Iran (all figures in this para U.S.). Western Canadian Select traded at a discount of $19.40 to WTI, up from a discount of $20.20. Natural gas for September added four cents to $2.7. The TSX energy index added 2.08 points to close at 451.69.

Doug Bartole's Alberta Cardium and Belly River producer, InPlay Oil Corp. (IPO), added 28 cents to $17.65 on 228,900 shares. It ended the week by completing a "highly accretive" acquisition of a private Belly River junior with 1,400 barrels a day of production and an inventory of 50 drilling locations. The $54.2-million cash deal closed nice and fast. InPlay's initial announcement about it on Aug. 5 it targeted completion at the end of the month.

Neither announcement identified the private junior, but it is Sifton Petroleum, and continues a string of sales for principals Jeff Boissonneault and Stan Odut. Nearly two decades ago, their Sifton Energy promotion -- a different Sifton from today -- was one of the early redevelopers of the Alberta Cardium, helping to kick off something of a Cardium renaissance. Conventional development of the Cardium had started during the 1950s and peaked in the 1970s. After decades of vertical drilling left the core pools largely depleted, the sleepy-looking play shot awake again in the late 2000s, as advancements in horizontal drilling led activity to "explode" (as one Macquarie report put it at the time). The play's first modern horizontal well with multiple fracture stages was drilled in 2008 by what is now Bonterra Energy Corp. (BNE: $5.75). Results were so promising that industry activity jumped to 12 wells in 2009 and over 500 wells in 2010.

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