Twin Butte Energy Ltd TBTEF

from Stockwatch today

[blondeBond]

Jim Saunders's Twin Butte Energy Ltd. (TBE) lost a cent to $1.45 on 6.73 million shares, its lowest level since October, 2011. That year was a hard one for Twin Butte. It spent the year falling from over $3.50 as it worked to develop its Frog Lake heavy oil play in the Lloydminster area of Alberta-Saskatchewan. At the end of 2011, it bought Emerge Oil & Gas and reinvented itself as a dividend payer, saying the combination of Frog Lake and Emerge's promising Primate heavy oil property nearby would support a payout of 1.5 cents a month. This was boosted to 1.6 cents a month in November, 2012. By then, the stock was back up around $3, but it started falling again after Primate proved less productive than hoped.

Twin Butte never cut its dividend, even after reaching a low of $1.60 in the summer of 2013.

A few months after that, it successfully reinvented itself again, this time by lessening its exposure to purely heavy oil by buying Black Shire Energy in the Provost area of Alberta. Light and medium oil now makes up over one-third of its production. Twin Butte continued to narrow its focus on light and medium oil by putting some of its heavy oil properties up for sale or farm-out this month. Despite this, it has fallen below its summer 2013 low of $1.60, and investors are beginning to get nervous. The dividend now yields a generous 13.2 per cent. Insiders still seem confident. Many of them acquired thousands of shares this month and last through purchase plans or right exercises, and on top of that, chief executive officer Saunders acquired 164,000 shares and chief financial officer Alan Steele acquired 21,140.