Encore buys 20 million barrels of oil reserves
By DAN PILLER
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER
FORT WORTH - Encore Acquisition Co. of Fort Worth said Wednesday that it has bought about 20 million barrels of oil reserves in the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming for $400 million from Anadarko Petroleum of Houston.
Encore said the properties have an estimated life of about 14 years and will require about $17 million to develop from their current daily production of about 4,000 barrels of oil from 614 wells.
The deal is expected to close by the end of the first quarter and includes a gas-processing plant and an oil and natural gas pipeline gathering system.
Encore President Jon Brumley said the company believes that the properties will generate about $50 million in cash flow this year and next. "These properties can produce with a relatively modest $7 million annual investment, and the remaining $43 million is available to grow production or reduce debt," Brumley said.
Shares of Encore (ticker: EAC) closed at $23.42, up $1, in trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Encore, organized in 1998, is primarily an oil producer in older fields of North Dakota and West Texas
The sale by Anadarko is part of that company's strategy announced late last year to divest several major properties in Texas, Louisiana, Wyoming and the Gulf of Mexico to raise up to $9 billion to reduce debt incurred in its $22.5 billion purchase last year of Kerr-McGee Corp. and Western Gas Resources.
Anadarko has sold its Canadian subsidiary for $4.24 billion and is looking for a buyer for its once-thriving Giddings Field in South-Central Texas, which was developed by Union Pacific Resources Group of Fort Worth.
Anadarko bought Union Pacific Resources in 2000 for $8.2 billion.

As we begin to look ahead to the opportunities ahead in 2007, it also pays to look back on lessons learned in the last year as well. Here are some lessons learned from trading that you can implement to take yourself to higher levels of prosperity in the year ahead.
1. Trading is a mirror of other elements of my life. If I am behaving in an undisciplined way outside of trading, my trading shows undisciplined behavior like not following stops. If I feel depressed about something in my personal life, my trading observations will not pick up as many opportunities as I cannot see the possibilities that I see when I am in a positive frame of mind. Use a journal to diagram issues in your trading that can allow you to not only be a more effective trader but also experience personal growth.
2. Treat every trade as both a potential loser and a potential winner. Know how to tell the difference when you're in it. . Think positively. Have confidence in yourself. If you don't feel good about what you're doing, change it immediately.
4. Never make a trade on a market that just completed a major move if the only reason for making the trade is that you just saw a major move and missed it. (Warning: Those most susceptible to this are the ones who did expect the move but made the trade earlier.)
5. Winning traders and losing traders experience the trading environment differently. It makes them feel different and as a result their actions consistently vary. In psychological terms, they interpret the market differently because they have a separate belief system in the way that they see themselves relative to the stock market. Change your belief system from the reactionary emotional beliefs of most losing traders to a more proactive unemotional approach.
6. Know when not to trade. This skill is just as important as knowing when to pull the trigger. Part of being a great trader is being a keen observer of what a stock is telling you. By committing to observe objectively, you give yourself permission not to trade until the conditions are right.
7. Don't trade for excitement or entertainment. Avoid the highs that come from quick profits or the lows that can appear after losses. If you have a sound system, it does not matter whether any particular trade makes a profit or a loss. What matters is that the probabilities over time are in your favor. You must remember that no system is perfect, and prepare for losses along the way. You should measure yourself on whether you followed your rules and executed your system, for both winning and losing trades. The process of trading is much easier when you focus on execution of a system rather than on whether each individual trade was right or not, because you take your ego out of the process. This makes you more rational and less emotional, which leads to better investment performance.
8. It is critically important to protect your psychological capital by not overtrading or playing for excitement instead of profits. This can cause you to be emotionally "drawn down", and then sit out, usually as a move just begins that could have been a big opportunity. Yet you miss the new big trend because you were financially and emotionally exhausted by overtrading in a tough market. As a result, you can't see through the negative emotions because you feel beat up by the markets. Managing your internal psychological state of mind is equally important as managing your financial position.
9. Be careful not to overreact to intraday news. It seems to me like every year, there are more whipsaws where the opening occurred in one direction but was then reversed with a close in the opposite direction. I like to do my preparation for each day's trading in advance after the previous day's close, so I know what the market structure looks like heading into the next day's trading. This allows me to move from a reactionary state to a more proactive posture. This helps position your mindset to capitalize on news-driven intraday volatility.
10. Accept total responsibility for the results of your trading. Remember that losers always look for somebody else to blame. Winners look to themselves particularly if they have to take a loss on some trades, as is inevitable for all traders and all systems. When you accept total responsibility, you commit that in any market environment you will find the way to win.
Price Headley is the founder and chief analyst of BigTrends.com.

What is the definition of confidence? I define confidence as positive thoughts, feelings and actions reflecting your self-belief and expectations of your ultimate success. Success is never guaranteed, but self-doubt and negativity can ensure failure. When you believe in yourself, you move away from harmful distractions such as anxiety and fear, and you move toward a more effective performance focus. Today, we'll take a look at how to make sure you're confident enough to survive the trading game.
Aside from the obvious benefits, confidence also bolsters your internal security during trading slumps and gives you additional fuel to persevere through challenging periods. Self-belief promotes traders to create more ambitious performance targets, allowing for greater accomplishment. Traders who display low confidence tend to worry excessively about mistakes, lose focus on what's driving results, quit trading at the wrong times and get overly worked up about each new trade. Excess confidence can also be dangerous in causing a trader to overcommit capital and be subjected to too much risk when a position goes bad. So your goal should be to promote the internal confidence while still showing the external disciplines to prevent the ego from taking over the consistent execution of a trading method.
Here are seven tips to encourage greater confidence:
1. Frequently visualize a successful trading process. What goes into good trading for you? Make sure you see the preparation required, the focus you have during the trading day, and the continous learning from both winning and losing trades to keep getting more effective.
2. Increase your level of physical fitness, as this will enhance both your trading alertness and give a boost to your self-image simultaneously. Both of these elements make you a more confidence trader.
3. Make a list of your strengths. Review this list regularly to remind yourself of how successful you really are.
4. Eliminate negative thoughts and memories. When they occur, replace them with positive self-statements (for example, "I create my own luck" or "I have a good written plan of how I will execute my trades").
5. Have a general strategy going into each trading day. When you prepare the day before, you position yourself to be proactive and gain confidence as you implement your plan. How aware are you of what you're experiencing in your mind, body and soul at any moment? You need to set up a monitoring system at the end of each trading day, to summarize what you executed according to your rules and what you did not. Look for patterns in your behavior, that you can copy if they work for you, or minimize if they are costing you.
6. Create positive body language regardless of the gain or loss on that trading day. The way you act will often influence the way you feel for future trades. The more confident you feel, the more confidence you will show in your trading.
7. Improve on areas of weakness during preparation time and you'll create more confidence and belief during the trading day.
Focus on one of these seven tips at a time, until you can build that area as a habit in your routine. This will service to greatly improve your trading confidence over time.
Price Headley is the founder and chief analyst of BigTrends.com.

What is the definition of confidence? I define confidence as positive thoughts, feelings and actions reflecting your self-belief and expectations of your ultimate success. Success is never guaranteed, but self-doubt and negativity can ensure failure. When you believe in yourself, you move away from harmful distractions such as anxiety and fear, and you move toward a more effective performance focus. Today, we'll take a look at how to make sure you're confident enough to survive the trading game.
Aside from the obvious benefits, confidence also bolsters your internal security during trading slumps and gives you additional fuel to persevere through challenging periods. Self-belief promotes traders to create more ambitious performance targets, allowing for greater accomplishment. Traders who display low confidence tend to worry excessively about mistakes, lose focus on what's driving results, quit trading at the wrong times and get overly worked up about each new trade. Excess confidence can also be dangerous in causing a trader to overcommit capital and be subjected to too much risk when a position goes bad. So your goal should be to promote the internal confidence while still showing the external disciplines to prevent the ego from taking over the consistent execution of a trading method.
Here are seven tips to encourage greater confidence:
1. Frequently visualize a successful trading process. What goes into good trading for you? Make sure you see the preparation required, the focus you have during the trading day, and the continous learning from both winning and losing trades to keep getting more effective.
2. Increase your level of physical fitness, as this will enhance both your trading alertness and give a boost to your self-image simultaneously. Both of these elements make you a more confidence trader.
3. Make a list of your strengths. Review this list regularly to remind yourself of how successful you really are.
4. Eliminate negative thoughts and memories. When they occur, replace them with positive self-statements (for example, "I create my own luck" or "I have a good written plan of how I will execute my trades").
5. Have a general strategy going into each trading day. When you prepare the day before, you position yourself to be proactive and gain confidence as you implement your plan. How aware are you of what you're experiencing in your mind, body and soul at any moment? You need to set up a monitoring system at the end of each trading day, to summarize what you executed according to your rules and what you did not. Look for patterns in your behavior, that you can copy if they work for you, or minimize if they are costing you.
6. Create positive body language regardless of the gain or loss on that trading day. The way you act will often influence the way you feel for future trades. The more confident you feel, the more confidence you will show in your trading.
7. Improve on areas of weakness during preparation time and you'll create more confidence and belief during the trading day.
Focus on one of these seven tips at a time, until you can build that area as a habit in your routine. This will service to greatly improve your trading confidence over time.
Price Headley is the founder and chief analyst of BigTrends.com.

Shanghai. December 20. INTERFAX-CHINA - China's plans to allow greater foreign participation and to streamline the gold industry are unlikely to impact short-term market supply or demand, but they are the first steps towards integrating the country's gold exchange into world markets, analysts say.

INTERNATIONAL oil prices soared in 2006, reaching an all-time high of US$78,36 per barrel in August impacting negatively on non-oil-producing countries such as Zimbabwe.Fuel prices in Zimbabwe were very volatile this year with fuel dealers charging prices well above the Government-stipulated pricesFor the greater part of the year the country was caught in a fuel price spiral caused by shortages of foreign currency and rising international oil prices.
The rise in international oil prices came mainly on the back of political tensions in the Middle East as well as worries that members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries would be unable to increase output in the event of supply disruption from other major producers. Opec accounts for about 40 percent of the world's crude oil supplies, and currently production is at around 28 million barrels per day.
In the past, the steep rise in oil prices occurred mostly in the wake of disruptions to oil supplies, such as the first and second oil crises, the Gulf war, Iraqi war and terrorism concerns, etc.
The rise in oil prices has had an adverse impact on the world economy, particularly on non-oil-producing countries, as this translates into a corresponding rise in oil prices on the local market, and hence general rise in prices.
Furthermore, the trends in the international oil situation and oil prices are major factors that have a significant influence on world economic growth.
In Zimbabwe, fuel prices have risen from around $280 per litre six months ago to around $2 700 although the gazetted price remains at $335 per litre.
The volatility of the exchange rate on the parallel market has also led to speculative pricing, causing unwarranted price hikes.
In these difficult times, it is imperative for the authorities to be innovative and introduce measures that rid the fuel sector of the retrogressive arbitrage and rent seeking activities to establish some form of control.
In trying to mitigate the effects of oil prices, Zimbabwe has taken an aggressive campaign to look for substitutes in the form of biodiesel and coal bed methane.
In an effort to prevent any weakening of prices in 2007 Opec has unanimously agreed to cut output by a combined 500 000 barrels (2 percent) per day, with the move delayed until February 1 when the northern hemisphere winter season comes to an end.
This move was, however, against the warnings from the International Energy Agency, the oil consumers' club, that the previous cut of 1,2 million barrels agreed in October but not fully implemented was already leaving the market tight.
By postponing the further reduction until the peak demand period has passed, Opec was also responding to most importer nations' concerns that an immediate cut would drive prices higher.
Meanwhile, US government data released last week showed that crude oil stocks in the world's largest consuming economy had fallen by 4,3 million barrels as imports declined, while a monthly report from the IEA, an advisor to 26 industrialised countries, re-vealed that industrialised countries' crude oil stocks had declined by 40 million barrels in October.
These data in turn stand as evidence that the November 1 2006 production cut implemented by the oil cartel was impacting negatively on the economy, and that the approved February 1 2007 cut was going to exert further pressure.
However, some critics continue to question the organisation's ability to work as a whole, as they made reference to the similar failed December 2004 game plan.
The price of oil has fluctuated widely over the past 50 years and the first "oil shock" occurred when Opec members, acting partly in response to the United States' support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, agreed to control oil supplies and raised prices by more than 400 percentOil prices stabilised in the late 1970s at around US$25 per barrel, before rising to a new peak of around US$39 per barrel following the outbreak of war between Iraq and Iran in 1981,which severely disrupted supplies.
The peak, however, was short-lived and prices gradually declined in real terms over the next 20 years, with the exception of a brief upturn associated with the 1991 Gulf War.
By 1999, oil prices fell as low as $13 per barrel, equivalent in real terms to the price prevailing before 1973 due to improvements in supply. Prices began to firm from 2000, initially responding to cutbacks in Opec output and strong global demand, particularly from the United States and China

Eastman Kodak Co.’s health group has raised prices on all its medical imaging films and related supplies; the second time Kodak done so in 2006. Kodak said the continued high costs of raw materials, especially silver, were the main reason for the 8% to 12% price increases.
“This year has seen unprecedented high costs for basic commodities such as silver. These costs continue to escalate,”president of Kodak’s health group, Kevin Hobert, said in a statement.

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Silver for March delivery sank 34 cents to $12.64 per ounce today on Nymex