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June 24, 2002; Encana Has An Abundance of Growth Projects Successor to the ownership of the railroad land grant property and
provincial military lands, Encana has premium assets in Alberta even before it
looks elsewhere. Ironically as
Encana’s predecessors expanded outside of their traditional area, they made
impressive discoveries in supposedly picked over places where the industry
leaders have long been active. Remarkably
the company has some of the best growth potential in the industry offshore Old
Scotland, offshore New Scotland, in the U.S. Rockies, as well as in British
Columbia. The first two along with
coal bed methane helped justify our enthusiasm for PanCanadian Petroleum that
then became PanCanadian Energy that finally became EnCana. The merger with Alberta Energy brought the Jonah Field in
Wyoming to the combined company. The British Columbia project that we have in mind was just highlighted two weeks ago when we were with Encana in Calgary. Randy Eresman, President of EnCana’s Onshore North American division, drew for us a wavy band three to five miles wide and 175 miles long that described a prehistoric underground formation analogous to the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. The reef appears filled with natural gas of which Encana expects to recover 2.5 trillion cubic feet, little of which has been booked as proven to date. The company has been accumulating land on the trend for four years and announced its coup only after the land acquisition had been largely completed. Technological innovations in drilling with wells that have a horizontal section and do not introduce water to the formation were necessary for the economic recovery of the sweet gas. |