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Gas prices touched nearly $3 per thousand cubic feet Thursday, the highest in a year

Southwestern Energy, a big US natural gas driller, has nice timing. Good thing; companies wrestling with big debt need it. It rebuilt its debt and equity structure in the past few days, a very good moment to do so. Its shares have rallied deliriously this year as the natural gas price has spiked — by 30 per cent this month alone. Money is again available to the sector, as long as the cash goes to fixing the balance sheet rather than digging and drilling.

Southwestern’s latest balance sheet features $4.8bn in net debt, including bonds and bank debt that come due in 2018. Despite this year’s share rally, its market cap of $4.9bn is still a third lower than it was two years ago. Its first action this week was to refinance and push out both a credit facility and a bank loan due in two years to 2020, in exchange for somewhat higher interest payments and tighter terms. Then, on Wednesday, the master stroke: Southwestern sold $1.1bn worth of stock, growing its share count by a fifth, to fund $750m worth of bond buybacks and a bank loan repayment.

Its stock price fell about a tenth in response to the dilution. This was a very mild response, given the immense size of the offering and the rally in the company’s shares in recent months. This may reflect renewed optimism for gas producers whose fortunes were brutalised by an oversupply problem even more acute than the one that has plagued the oil market.

Gas prices touched nearly $3 per thousand cubic feet on Thursday, the highest in a year. A hotter summer has slowed the swelling of inventories. Production growth has also flattened, with the Department of Energy forecasting only a 1 per cent rise in output this year.

Nearly two years ago, famed shale gas pioneer Chesapeake Energy tried to clean up its own capital structure by selling $4bn of assets to Southwestern, which was then chasing growth. Time teaches hard lessons, but Southwestern has learnt them.

Email the Lex team at lex@ft.com