Attractive

In separate announcements, Gulfport Energy Corp. and Seneca Resources Corp. reported that they are achieving encouraging production results from some of the first horizontal wells drilled in the Utica Shale.

Canada’s Duvernay Shale has the potential to become one of the “most attractive liquids-rich plays” in North America, according to Wood Mackenzie analysts, who point to ExxonMobil Corp.’s decision this month to pay $3.1 billion for one of the play’s biggest developers as affirmation.

Canada’s Duvernay Shale has the potential to become one of the “most attractive liquids-rich plays” in North America, according to Wood Mackenzie analysts, who point to ExxonMobil Corp.’s decision this month to pay $3.1 billion for one of the play’s biggest developers as affirmation.

Running counter to recent public and private sector analyses, mediocre results so far and complex geology have combined to cause an Alliance Bernstein (AB) analyst to question whether the Monterey Shale will live up to some of the hype surrounding its future prospects. Even with these reservations, high oil prices could push the play closer to its potential, the report conceded.

Whether the natural gas market is “proactive or reactive” today doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, according to Bentek Energy’s Jack Weixel. Like the chicken or the egg metaphor, asking which came first, gross gas production or dry gas production is irrelevant when considering that today output is 20 Bcf/d higher than in 2006. The real question is how will the market adapt, or rather, what’s the market going to do with all the production?

Spot natural gas made it three straight days of advances Wednesday as attractive storage differentials at some Western points, along with cooler weather, prompted buying in most regions of the country. A handful of Northeast locations were the exception as the posted double-digit drops, mostly between a dime and 30 cents. At the close of futures trading May had fallen 4.6 cents to $2.141 and June had skidded 5.1 cents to $2.267. May crude oil tumbled $2.54 to $101.47/bbl.

Cash prices bounded higher Monday and left futures in the dust as traders cited attractive storage differentials and were ambivalent about the prospects for storage gas flooding the market. At the close of futures trading April had advanced 2.5 cents to $2.351 and May had gained 3 cents to $2.466. April crude oil rose $1.95 to $107.06/bbl.

Despite pressures from lower natural gas prices, solar energy — both utility-scale and distributed generation projects — continues to be an attractive investment, according to senior executives with Sempra Energy and NRG Energy Inc. who talked bullishly about the renewable energy resource on separate earnings conference calls on Tuesday.

As attractive hedging positions begin to roll off in 2012 and 2013 for exploration and production (E&P) companies, particularly for natural gas, energy analysts will be keyed in to which companies add new hedges and at what prices, according to Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (TPH).