WASHINGTON — Home prices rose in nearly all major U.S. cities in April from March, further evidence of a housing market that is slowly improving even while the job market slumps.
The Standard & Poor’s/ Case-Shiller home-price index released Tuesday showed increases in 19 of the 20 cities tracked. That’s the second-straight month that prices have risen in a majority of U.S. cities.
And a measure of national prices rose 1.3 percent in April from March, the first increase in seven months.
San Francisco, Washington and Phoenix posted the biggest increases in April. Prices fell 3.6 percent in Detroit, the only city to record a drop.
The month-to-monthpresident of Encana’s U.S. division, according to the story.
As the October auction date approached, Wojahn and McClendon were messaging each other directly, Reuters said. Wojahn referred in an Oct. 20, 2010, e-mail to Encana and Chesapeake executives working on “arranging a bidding strategy,” according to Reuters.
Chesapeake dropped the “joint-bid strategy,” according to a subsequent e-mail reported by Reuters. Average winning bids for the leases dropped from $1,413 an acre in a similar state auction in May 2010 to $46 per acre in the October auction, Reuters said, citing its own analysis.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources also is “evaluating” the Reuters report citing the e-mail messages, a department spokesman said.
“We’re very much interested in the auction process and assuring fair market value,” spokesman Ed Golder said.
The department also asked the state attorney general to review the matter, Golder said. There is no formal investigation, he said. Joy Yearout, a spokesman for Michigan AttorneyGeneral Bill Schuette, said she couldn’t confirm or deny whether there was an investigation.
Chesapeake, based in Oklahoma City, denied any collusion with Encana over bidding for Michigan leases.
“While there were discussions between Encana and Chesapeake in 2010 about forming an ‘area of mutual interest’ joint venture regarding leases in Michigan, no such agreement was reached between the parties and no AMI was formed,” Chesapeake spokesman Jim Gipson said.
“Nor did Encana and Chesapeake make any joint bids,” Gipson said. “Chesapeake has invested approximately $400 million to acquire leases in Michigan.”
Chesapeake and Encana may be vulnerable to government action even if they were only talking about engaging in a joint venture, saidDarren Bush, professor at the University of Houston Law Center and a former federal prosecutor in the Justice Department’s antitrust division. “The joint venture would have to revolve around something other than lowering prices,” he said.
“If they’re divvying up markets or agreeing that only one company will make a bid, that’s bid-rigging or naked price-fixing,” Bush saidin a phone interview.
“Given the nature of the documents, it would be hard to walk away from this,” he said. “They’re likely to settle.”
Chesapeake was the second-largest producer of natural gas in the Fayetteville Shale of northern Arkansas before selling its interests to BHP Billiton Ltd. in 2011 for $4.75 billion. It still is a major player in several other shale fields such as the Marcellus Shale in the U.S. Northeast, particularly Pennsylvania.
Encana operates in the U.S. in states including Texas and Colorado, as well as the Collingwood shale area in Michigan. The company has interests in 2.4 million acres of land across the country, of which 1.9 million acres are undeveloped.
Business, Pages 25 on 06/27/2012