EnCana Aims for Growth

Article Excerpt

ENCANA CORP. $91.17 (Toronto symbol ECA; SI Rating: Average) now has assembled 220,000 net acres in the Horn River area of Northeast B.C., and 325,000 net acres in the Haynesville region of Louisiana and Texas. Early drilling indicates that these two fields contain large amounts of shale gas. Unlike regular natural gas, gas producers must use specialized fracturing techniques to release shale gas. That makes extracting shale gas about twice as expensive as production from traditional gas wells. While actual production is still years away, EnCana feels each of these deposits could eventually produce 1 billion cubic feet of gas per day. It now produces 3.7 billion cubic feet daily. EnCana is a buy. buy…