Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s production averaged 2.48 Bcfe/d in 3Q2009, up 7% from the 2.32 Bcf/d produced a year earlier, the company said Thursday. Average daily production consisted of 2.286 Bcf of natural gas and 32,902 b/d of oil and natural gas liquids.

The company again released its quarterly operating results ahead of its financial results, which are scheduled to be issued Monday. A conference call to discuss the full report is planned for Tuesday morning.

Adjusted for divestitures, voluntary production curtailments because of low natural gas prices and involuntary production curtailments because of pipeline repairs — which together totaled around 275 MMcfe/d — Chesapeake said its sequential and year-over-year production growth rates would have been 2% and 14%, respectively. The company anticipates full-year production growth to be up 5-6% in 2009, 8-10% in 2010 and 12-14% in 2011, net of any property sales.

“While we expect natural gas prices to move higher in the months ahead, low natural gas prices at the end of the 2009 third quarter led to a 2.2 Tcfe reduction of our proved reserves,” said CEO Aubrey K. McClendon. “Excluding these price-related revisions, Chesapeake would have reported 14.2 Tcfe of proved reserves for the quarter — a level above that which we had previously targeted achieving by year-end 2009.”

The CEO said the company’s finding and net acquisition costs of less than 80 cents/Mcfe benefited from “strong drilling results, reduced drilling costs and approximately $960 million of drilling carries from our joint venture partners.”

Chesapeake in 3Q2009 drilled 853 gross operated wells (624 net wells with an average working interest of 73%) and participated in another 864 gross wells operated by other companies (76 net wells with an average working interest of 9%). The company said it is currently using 105 operated drilling rigs to further develop its inventory of around 35,500 drill sites (net), which represents more than a 10-year inventory of drilling projects.

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