Huge Things Going On In Energy: An Encana Update -- September 19, 2016

I've been following Encana fairly closely over the last few years but have done a poor job updating Encana on the blog, mostly because Encana is not in the Bakken.

Quick recap: once upon a time, Encana had a huge presence in the Piceance, even going so far as to say they "owned" the Piceance. Not any more.

From Bizjournals in which they said they were selling their assets in the Piceance:

The sale of Encana’s assets in North America and the United States could bring the company $1 billion, helping to reduce the company’s roughly $5.4 billion in fixed and revolving debt.

Encana officials have listed as its “core” focus the company’s Montney and Duvernay assets in Western Canada, along with the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford assets in western part of Texas and the southeastern part of New Mexico.

According to Reuters, the sources said Encana is open to offers on all of its non-core assets including its Piceance Basin assets in western Colorado, its San Juan Basin assets in New Mexico, its Tuscaloosa Marine Shale assets in Mississippi and Louisiana, the Deep Panuke offshore gas field in Nova Scotia and its Horn River and Wheatland assets in western Canada.

The Encana corporate presentation for September, 2016, does not even mention the Piceance. 

The article that brought this back to me was a Bloomberg article in which Encana said it was raising $1 billion to increase drilling in the Permian. 

Encana Corp., the Canadian oil and natural gas producer, is selling about $1 billion of shares to fund drilling next year in Texas and repay debt.

The company agreed to sell 107 million shares at $9.35 apiece. An additional 16.05 million shares can also be purchased, as part of the deal.

Encana joins producers including Crescent Point Energy Corp. in selling shares in recent weeks to fund drilling as U.S. crude is up 65 percent from its February low. Most of the company’s investment next year will be targeted toward increasing output in the Permian Basin in West Texas, the largest U.S. oil field.

One of Canada’s largest gas producers, Encana has increasingly focused its attention on boosting oil and petroleum liquids production from shales including the Permian, where it established a position with the 2014 purchase of Athlon Energy for $7.1 billion. The company said it aims to double the number of wells on stream in the Permian in 2017, compared to this year.

The snippet about Crescent Point Energy explains some of the rumors I've received about Crescent Point Energy over the past few months.