Original Here /By Dustin Bleizeffer

EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. said the assets were derived from its 2004 purchase of Tom Brown, Inc. They employ nine people in EnCana’s Rock Springs office and approximately 15 lease operators in the field. The sale does not include EnCana’s Wind River and Jonah properties.

“Although the Green River Basin is a solidly performing asset, keeping it in our portfolio would limit future opportunities for the asset and for EnCana in other areas,” EnCana spokesman Randy Teeuwen said in a prepared statement.

EnCana’s Green River Basin assets yield about 30 million cubic feet (Mmcf) of gas per day. By comparison, EnCana’s Jonah natural gas operations have a production capacity of about 1 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day.

In a phone interview, Teeuwen said the Green River Basin properties are “more mature.”

These assets have been in play for a long time. While there’s still a lot of resource there, and it’s still an active play, we feel our capital and our resources are better spent somewhere else,” Teeuwen said.

The U.S. natural gas market is notoriously volatile with prices bouncing from below $5 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) to more than $10 per mcf. A recurring problem in the Rockies is that prices are sometimes pushed below the national average because of lack of pipeline export capacity.

Teeuwen said the “Rockies price differential” was not a driving factor in the decision to sell the Green River Basin assets.

“This is a really complex environment for the industry we’re working in, right now. The differential? This is not a good time for gas prices in Wyoming, but that in and of itself was not the driving force or the deciding factor,” he said.

Teeuwen added that mature oil and gas operations are always being bought, sold, traded and acquired. “Assets like this are constantly in play,” Teeuwen said.