Borrowings

During 2012 Goodrich Petroleum will continue to emphasize oil-directed drilling over natural gas with the majority of its focus, and spending, on the Eagle Ford Shale of South Texas, the company said Wednesday.

Southwestern Energy Co. said it will spend slightly less next year in the Fayetteville Shale while it nearly doubles spending in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. Overall, Southwestern’s 2012 capital program is pegged at $2.3 billion, up from about $2.1 billion in 2011. Production is expected to climb about 15% from this year.

Rapid City, SD-based Black Hills Corp. said it has paid off the remaining $105 million of borrowings used to acquire five utilities (four natural gas and one electric) from Aquila last year. It was part of a $383 million bridge acquisition facility loan originally obtained to acquire the Colorado electric and gas utilities and three other gas utilities in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska in a deal that closed July 14, 2008. Last December Black Hills extended the bridge facility to a Dec. 29 maturity date this year from one that originally was set for last Feb. 5. This allowed the utility holding company more time to line up long-term debt financing. In April Black Hills used $30.2 million from the sale of a 25% ownership interest in its Wygen III power plant to pay down a portion of the facility, and then in May the company completed a $250 million public long-term bond offering, the proceeds of which were used to pay off the final $105 million. Black Hills now has about $300 million of liquidity to support its businesses and it plans “to obtain additional long-term debt financing by year-end to support our growth initiatives,” said CEO David Emery.

Citing some higher costs of short-term borrowings that will go away in the longer-term, Spokane, WA-based Avista Corp. last Wednesday reported lower second quarter profits, but sharply increased net income for the first half of this year, compared to similar periods last year. Avista’s CEO still expects 2006 to be a “good year.”