Nov. 5--Arena Resources Inc. announced Thursday that its third-quarter profit fell 55 percent. The Tulsa company's net income was $12.11 million, or 31 cents per fully diluted share, compared with $26.92 million, or 69 cents per fully diluted share, for the same period in 2008.

Arena had oil and gas revenues of $36.06 million, a 47 percent decrease from the $68.41 million it received for last year's quarter.

The revenue decrease was due to significant declines in commodity prices and a slight drop in oil production volumes, partially offset by higher natural gas volumes, the company said.

President and CEO Phil Terry was upbeat about Arena's performance.

"After two sequential quarters of declining production due to operating only one drilling rig, we have now begun to see the results we anticipated from an increase in drilling activity," he said in a news release. "With two drilling rigs operating for the entire quarter and a third rig starting the end of August, we drilled 49 new development wells on our Fuhrman-Mascho properties in the third quarter.

"We have seen our average daily production increase from approximately 6,000 barrels of oil equivalent in the second quarter to over 6,600 in the third quarter. September was the single best production month in the company's history, averaging over 7,400 BOEs per day."

Arena added a fourth rig recently. It anticipates it will drill approximately 175 wells in 2009.

Arena is an oil and gas exploration, development and production company with operations in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and New Mexico.

Shares of Arena rose $2.25 on Thursday to close at $42.81 on the New York Stock Exchange.

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