Crushed

Profits in the oil and natural gas industry are skyrocketing, but the pressure to keep share prices rising has crushed new field exploration and escalated merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, a trend that is expected to continue this year, the chairman of John S. Herold said Tuesday.

Profits in the oil and natural gas industry are skyrocketing, but the pressure to keep share prices rising has crushed new field exploration and escalated merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, a trend that is expected to continue this year, the chairman of John S. Herold said Tuesday.

EnCana Corp. crushed analysts’ first quarter earnings estimates and said it’s on track to meet production growth targets, producing 3,343 MMcfe/d of natural gas during the quarter, a 6% increase from the same period last year.

Late-November swing prices got “crushed” Monday, burdened bothtechnically by a slumping futures screen and fundamentally by acontinuing surplus of unseasonably warm weather, a Texas-basedproducer lamented. Virtually all points dropped between a nickeland about 15 cents, with declines in the vicinity of a dime beingmost common.

Futures got crushed again yesterday. After settling at $2.737,down 8.8 cents on the day, the October contract plunged to the mid$2.60s during the after hours Nymex Access trading session,following what was perceived to be a very bearish gas storagereport by the American Gas Association. Just one week ago, theOctober contract reached a high of $3.15/MMBtu.