PDC Energy is focused on shale drilling in three plays/regions: the Wattenberg Field in Colorado, the Utica Shale in southeast Ohio and the Marcellus Shale in West Virginia. The company owns roughly 125,000 acres of leases in the Marcellus Shale and 48,000 acres of leases in the Utica Shale. PDC issued their fourth quarter and year end results for 2013 yesterday and it was a good year for this growing company. Production was up 35% overall with oil and NGL volumes up 40% for the year.
Although they’ve only really just gotten started with their Utica drilling program, PDC reports they have 200 locations targeted for future Utica drilling. Not all of that will happen in 2014 of course. Even though PDC had substantially higher production, they experienced a net loss on the balance sheet due to risk pricing for natural gas–complicated financial trading of derivatives to hedge against price risk (trading which didn’t go the way they wanted it to). The net loss for 2013 was a lot less than the loss in 2012, so the trend is going in the right direction. Here’s the update issued yesterday, updating the financial and operational picture for PDC:
