U.S. shale oil player Bill Barrett Corp. said it was raising its expectations for full-year production for 2017 and 2018, even though it took a quarterly loss.

Bill Barrett said Wednesday it raised its 2017 production guidance to between 6.9 million and 7.1 million barrels of oil equivalent.

"We now anticipate 2017 production growing over 20 percent relative to 2016 and expect to generate greater than 30 percent growth in 2018," President and CEO Scot Woodall said in a statement.

The revision announced Wednesday is higher than declared in September, when the company said it would produce between 6.4 million and 6.6 million barrels of oil equivalent. The September guidance was a 4 percent increase from its previous estimate and 12 percent higher than last year.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that Colorado produces around 374,000 barrels of oil per day.

Colorado is rich in shale oil reserves, supplying about 3 percent of total U.S. crude oil production in large part from its Niobrara and Denver-Julesberg basins. Production quadrupled from 2010 to 2015, but slowed down last year because of the strains of lower crude oil prices.

The company said Wednesday the cost of doing business was moving lower, with the lease operating expense of $3.08 per barrel of oil equivalent marking a 15 percent drop from the last quarter. Expenses in the Denver-Julesberg basin were lower by 18 percent.

Total third quarter production was 1.92 million barrels of oil equivalent, beating its guidance for the quarter by 10 percent. About 60 percent of the company's output was in the form of oil.

Nevertheless, the company said adjusted net income for the quarter reflected a loss of $5.9 million.

The production trends come as the price for crude oil presses two-year highs. Lower crude oil prices crimped spending on exploration and production. Drilling services company Baker Hughes last week counted 33 rigs working in Colorado, a loss of 1 from the previous week, but twice as high as the same period last year.

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Raton Basin earthquakes linked to oil and gas fluid injections
Boulder CO (SPX) Oct 26, 2017
A rash of earthquakes in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico recorded between 2008 and 2010 was likely due to fluids pumped deep underground during oil and gas wastewater disposal, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study. The study, which took place in the 2,200-square-mile Raton Basin along the central Colorado-northern New Mexico border, found more than 1,800 earthquakes up ... read more

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