Encana focuses on shale gas

Article Excerpt

ENCANA CORP $31.86 (Toronto symbol ECA; Shares outstanding: 735.3 million; Market cap: $23.4 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 2.5%; www.encana.com) is selling its natural-gas processing plant and five pipelines in Colorado. Encana will receive $303 million U.S. when the sale closes by March 31, 2011. It did not say what it plans to do with the cash. The company is now looking for partners to help it finish building its Cabin gas plant in northeastern B.C. Starting in 2012, this plant will process gas from the large Horn River shale-gas field. (Shale gas is natural gas that is trapped in rock formations. To extract it, companies must pump water and chemicals into the rock. This fractures the rock and releases the natural gas.) Encana is a buy. buy…