Sep. 22--The stock of Fort Worth-based Quicksilver Resources soared to a yearly high on Tuesday, buoyed by an announcement of strong results from a Canadian natural gas well.

Quicksilver (ticker: KWK) closed at $14.43 a share, up $1.31, or 9.98 percent.

The stock vaulted as high as $15.10 in heavy early-morning trading, following a company announcement late Monday that a Quicksilver horizontal well in the remote Horn River Basin of northeast British Columbia had an impressive initial production rate of 13 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and an average daily yield of 10 million cubic feet during its first month of production.

The stock's trading volume topped 7.1 million shares on Tuesday, more than quadruple its daily average of about 1.69 million shares traded over the past five years, according to Bloomberg [need fuller name?-Jack] data.

Quicksilver CEO Glenn Darden said Monday that he is "very pleased" with the company's initial Horn River Basin horizontal well and hopes to realize "even greater production volumes per well" in future drilling there.

Quicksilver has a substantial lease holding of 127,000 net contiguous acres in the basin, which has some geological characteristics similar to the gas-rich Barnett Shale of North Texas, where Quicksilver is a signficant player and has a projected 10-year drilling inventory on its lease holdings of 192,000 net acres. Quicksilver's stock-price gains since March have been especially substantial given that it is predominantly a natural gas producer.

Gas prices, while sharply rising recently, are still at less than one-third their 2008 peak of more than $13 per million British thermal units in July. In futures trading Tuesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange, gas for October delivery settled at $3.609 per million BTUs.

Quicksilver's stock was exceptionally volatile in 2008, trading as high as $44.98 on May 7 and as low as $3.74 on Dec. 5 [these were intraday prices, not closes. The stock rose and fell largely in synch with natural gas prices, as did stocks of other independent gas producers.

Darden said Monday, in a briefing at company headquarters prior to a drilling-site tour for three state legislators, that the current gas glut eventually should dissipate, with prices likely to rebound to a "more reasonable" level of $6 to $8 per million BTUs.

If that price can be sustained, there should be a significant rebound in drilling activity, energy analysts have forecast.

JACK Z. SMITH, 817-390-7724

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