Evergreen profits take off

Allen Baker

Evergreen Resources Inc. showed improved results for the third quarter. Profits for the coalbed methane producer were $7.1 million; nearly triple the $2.4 million the company made in the same quarter of 2000.

Gas sales jumped to 85.8 million cubic feet daily, a 59 percent increase from 54.4 million a year ago.

Average price was also higher, unlike most companies in the industry, with Evergreen collecting $3.21 for each thousand cubic feet of gas, compared to $2.71 a year ago. That was a gain of 18 percent. Revenues rose 86 percent to $25.6 million, from $13.8 million the prior year.

Evergreen drilled 52 coalbed methane wells in the Raton Basin in the third quarter alone, boosting sales gas sales during the quarter by 8 percent over the second period. The drilling brought the company’s total wells connected to a pipeline to 646 at the end of the quarter, compared with 473 a year earlier.

The Denver-based company boosted its working interest in 17,800 acres of coalbed methane properties in the basin in July, bringing its interest in those properties to about 80 percent. That purchase from Shenandoah Operating Co. cost the company roughly $20 million.