Canadian Alternative

Article Excerpt

ENCANA CORP. $88 (New York symbol ECA; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 749.7 million; Market cap: $66.0 billion; WSSF Rating: Average) produces oil and gas in Canada and the United States. Unlike Chevron (see at left), it favors unconventional production sources such as oil sands and shale gas deposits. Unconventional deposits take more time and money to bring into production, but they tend to have longer lives. Unlike regular natural gas, shale gas pools inside rock formations and does not easily flow to the surface. Gas producers use specialized techniques to release gas, such as cracking the rock with high water pressure and sand. That makes extracting shale gas about twice as expensive as production from traditional gas wells. EnCana’s daily gas output now runs to 3.7 billion cubic feet. It just bought new shale gas properties in British Columbia, Texas and Louisiana. In several years, EnCana feels each of these deposits could produce 1 billion cubic feet of gas…