Sep. 21--FORT WORTH -- Quicksilver Resources, struggling along with other energy companies dealing with weak natural gas prices, has gotten some cheering news from 2,300 miles to the north.

The Fort Worth natural gas and oil exploration and production company announced Monday that its first completed well in the Horn River Basin in northeast British Columbia tested at a robust initial production rate of 13 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and has averaged about 10 million cubic feet per day during its first month of production.

Quicksilver CEO Glenn Darden said the company is "very pleased with the strong results of this initial test of our Horn River acreage position." At the company's annual shareholders meeting in May, Darden had forecast that Horn River has the potential to be "our next big, big project."

The company has a substantial stake at Horn River, having acquired 127,000 net contiguous acres of leases from the Canadian government in the winter of 2007-08.

Quicksilver is confident of its ability to do well at Horn River, in part because it is a shale gas play with similarities to the Barnett Shale of North Texas, where technological advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have made it a hotbed of drilling activity in recent years. Quicksilver has considerable drilling experience in the Barnett, which company officials hope to translate to success at Horn River.

"As we proceed with development of this project," Darden said, "we anticipate drilling longer laterals with additional stages of fracture stimulation which we expect will result in even greater production volumes per well. It is becoming clear from mapping, core analysis and production results that our substantial acreage position is in a very good part of the basin and contains the potential for multiple trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas resources for Quicksilver."

The company said its initial drilling has confirmed a fat gas-producing zone of "more than 500 feet of net shale thickness in the Muskwa and Klua/Evie shale formations at a vertical depth of approximately 9,000 feet."

The initial horizontal well, the D-50A well, was drilled into the Muskwa with approximately 3,500 feet of lateral (horizontal extension) and 10 stages of fracture stimulation. The company said it has drilled a second well and expects to begin completion of it later this year. The completion stage includes hydraulic fracturing.

Some of the key players at Horn River have strong North Texas connections. In addition to Quicksilver, other companies with large leaseholds include Irving-based oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp.; Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy, the No. 1 gas producer in the Barnett Shale; and Houston-based EOG Resources.

JACK Z. SMITH, 817-390-7724

-----

To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dfw.com.

Copyright (c) 2009, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

NYSE:KWK, NYSE:XOM, NYSE:DVN, NYSE:EOG,

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.