(RTTNews) -  Monday, Northern Oil and Gas Inc. (NOG: News ) reported a higher profit for the third quarter from the same quarter last year with oil and gas revenues making significant advances from the year ago period. Sequentially, revenues registered a 113% growth.

Wayzata, Minnesota based Northern's third quarter was $1.588 million compared with $0.871 million for the same period last year.. On a per share basis, net income for the quarter was 4 cents per share, up from 3 cents last year.

On average, three analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn 5 cents per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude one-time items.

The company noted that it yielded revenues of $5.15 million from the sale of 86,206 barrels of oil and 14.6 million cubic feet of natural gas during the third quarter of 2009. This compares to total revenues of $1.362 million earned in the same period last year.

While the oil and natural gas revenues represented a 113% increase over the second quarter, oil production volume also increased 71% in the quarter-over-quarter period.

Production expenses for the quarter equaled $2.49 per barrel of oil and the company realized an average price of $58.44 per barrel of oil on hedging contracts during the period.
The company recently executed a swap arrangement to sell 175,000 barrels of crude oil production at $82.60 per barrel commencing in November 2009 and continuing through December 2011.

Michael Reger, Northern Oil's chief executive officer, commented, "The quality of wells continues to improve, primarily as a result of an increased number of fracture stages during well completion. This, coupled with dramatically lower costs to drill and complete wells and higher oil prices, is resulting in substantially increased well economics."

With 14 to 16 new wells being added on drilling capital expenditures approximating $52 million and 3 new high working interest wells in North Dakota in the pipeline, the company expects to reach or exceed the high end of previously announced guidance of productions at 2,000 BOEPD with production increasing at a rate of 20% to 30% per quarter.

NOG is currently trading at $10.03 , down by 17 cents or 1.67% on a volume of 327 thousand shares on the NYSE Amex.

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by RTT Staff Writer

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