Search results for oil
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Posted
Oct 19 2009, 01:03 PM
by
Jim Jubak
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 When it comes to offshore oil and gas drilling rigs, it's a tale of two markets.
The market for jack-up rigs and shallow water semi-submersibles, the types of rigs used in relatively shallower water, is still taking a beating.
For example, in its latest fleet status report on October 9, Transocean (RIG) announced that it would stack (take out of service) an additional three jack-up rigs. That's a total of 22 jack-up rigs and six mid-water floaters that the company has stacked. On the other hand, orders for deep-water rigs, the hottest part of the market, got even stronger
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Posted
Oct 16 2009, 03:59 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
It is easy to forget how important sub-$40 oil prices were at the beginning of this year as the world dove into recession. If crude had been above $140 as it had been in July 2008, the combination of high oil prices and the credit crisis could have caused a depression almost certainly. Gas prices were already above $4 a gallon last summer, and the cost of crude was crippling industries from airlines to petrochemicals.
Whatever recovery is afoot now is a very modest one, especially in the U.S. and rest of the developed world. China may be able to take a blow from $100 oil prices, but due to its huge and rising consumption of crude the blow would be a hard one. The U.S., on the other hand, cannot continue to see tiny improvements in GDP if energy costs soar again.
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Posted
Oct 13 2009, 03:39 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
If a very minor recovery in the global economy pushes oil back toward $75, what will a robust expansion do? Crude moved to $73.79 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The reason for the rise appears to be a belief that a pick-up in business spending and consumer activity will increase the demand for crude. There is also no evidence that production is up much or that OPEC and other producing nations are likely to increase global supply.
The price of oil is now nearly double its 2009 lows, and the recession has barely “ended” in regions like the U.S., UK, EU, and Japan.
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Posted
Oct 09 2009, 04:01 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 One of the greatest hedge fund managers in history, Jim Rogers, insists that oil will move above $200 at some point during the bull market. He also sees the coming bubble in Treasuries bursting soon.
“The U.S. government bond market will be the next bubble to burst due to unsustainable borrowing,” he said during an interview with Reuters TV.
Rogers' argument is no different from that of most other commodities bulls. A rapid recovery in the global economy will hit oil supplies with unprecedented demand. Oil fields around the world are aging and their production is falling. Underwater fields are hard to drill and some many be unreachable based on current technology.
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Posted
Oct 07 2009, 01:59 PM
by
CAPS Editor
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This post comes from Matt Koppenheffer at partner site The Motley Fool.
"I like to go for cinches. I like to shoot fish in a barrel. But I like to do it after the water has run out." -- Warren Buffett.
In an effort to track down some of the companies that may fall into that "fish in a barrel" category, I've turned to the MSN CAPS investment community. Using CAPS' stock screener tool, I searched for companies with price-to-earnings ratios below 15, long-term debt-to-equity ratios below 50%, returns on equity of at least 10% and favorable ratings from the CAPS community.
Find on Bing: Why the price-to-earnings ratio matters
Below are three of the names that came through the screen. Each is a sector-leading name that nonetheless might be flying below many investors' radar screens.
These aren't offered as formal recommendations, but as starting points for additional digging. Each stock's CAPS page is a good place to launch your research; you can find a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made.
Here are our stocks: Read More...
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Posted
Sep 23 2009, 11:26 AM
by
Jim Jubak
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Norway's next oil frontier just got a little closer -- and there's only one stock to play it.
I don't follow Norwegian politics very closely, so you'll have to forgive me if I've been a little slow on the uptake.
But the re-election of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg on September 14th moves the country a little closer to opening the oil-rich but environmentally fragile Lofoten Islands to oil and natural gas drilling.
Bing: What are the Lofoten Islands?
In the country's general election, parties that favor exploration and production in Norway's share of the Arctic waters, including the Barents Sea, added seats. The government is still a coalition with a fragile majority, so no one expects quick movement on the contentious issue of drilling in this area, one of the most pristine in Norway.
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Posted
Sep 17 2009, 12:20 PM
by
Jim Jubak
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Suddenly they’re hitting gushers from the Gulf of Mexico to the South Atlantic off Brazil to the west coast of Africa off Ghana and Sierra Leone.
The oil from these finds will eventually become critical to global supply -- once the global economic downturn is over. The downturn has brought us what the International Energy Agency projects will be a two-year slump in demand. If the global economy recovers relatively quickly, the agency projects, we could be facing another supply squeeze by 2014.
Bing: More on deep-water exploration
But these finds themselves look like they will end another oil industry slump well before that. Deep-water exploration suddenly seems headed to a boom. And that means we’re likely to see rigs coming out of cold stacking and starting to earn day fees again well before 2011, the year many analysts had picked for a turn in the drilling industry.
In other words, the way to play these big deep water discoveries now is by buying shares in the drilling companies most likely to profit from an earlier turn in the sector’s fortunes.
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Posted
Aug 25 2009, 04:03 PM
by
CAPS Editor
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This post comes from Matt Koppenheffer at partner site The Motley Fool.
If I asked you to cook up your ideal company, what would it look like?
I'm not asking for your favorite Fortune 500 company or an up-and-coming small-cap. I want you to think about the components you'd give to a company you could concoct right from scratch.
Would it be in a particular industry? Would it provide services, or would it make products? Would it have fat profit margins or make money instead by doing a huge volume?
We could spend all day going over the details of this magnifique dish, but I'd guess there's one ingredient we'd all liberally add to our creations: growth. All other additives are great, but how interesting can a business be if it's stagnating without avenues for expansion?
Find on Bing: More on growth investing
I've dug up a sample of real-world companies expected to post significant growth in the years ahead. To see which might be the best bets, I've consulted with MSN CAPS, the investment community organized to help individuals beat the market. CAPS incorporates the knowledge, information and skills of more than 135,000 investors.
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Posted
Aug 19 2009, 09:35 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This article was written by Minyanville's Keith Fitz-Gerald
If you’re looking for the next “Big Oil” play, bet on Beijing. As my firm has been reporting for the past several years, China has been on a global commodities shopping spree, which includes locking up every source of oil that it can. The Red Dragon has cut deals in Africa, South America, Russia, and the Middle East -- and won’t stop there. Even the mainstream news media is finally becoming aware of this crucial trend. But here’s the thing. It’s not enough just to know that this is happening. In order to profit, an investor really needs to understand why it’s happening -- and to invest accordingly. Investors who lack this insight may make the strategic misstep of betting heavily (or exclusively) on the Western heavyweights-- Exxon Mobil (XOM), BP PLC (BP) or Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) -- while ignoring the oil sector’s real growth story, which is China. See, "Four Oil and Gas Stocks Powering Ahead."
Bing: More on Chinese Oil
Just this year alone:
China and Russia have signed a multi-billion-dollar, intergovernmental agreement to construct an oil line from Russia that will supply directly to China. Actually seven agreements in one, the terms depict a deal worth trillions of dollars -- including a 20-year oil contract to pump Russian oil to the Chinese market. In return, China has agreed to provide a total of $25 billion in loans to Russian oil companies Transneft and OAO Rosneft Oil Co. China even gets a cut of Rosneft’s production, as part of the deal.
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Posted
Aug 03 2009, 11:52 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 High oil prices were supposed to be a thing of the past, driven lower by oversupply in the U.S. and a continuing recession is almost every large economy other than China. The smallest hint of an economic recovery in the second half of 2009 has changed the trend in just a few days.
Oil moved above $70 again, for the first time in over a month, on news that China’s manufacturing index was picking up and a fairly modest drop in U.S. gross domestic product in the second quarter.
The surge in oil prices was based on modest signs that an improvement in the global economy is in its earliest stages, and raises the question of what will happen to crude if it appears a full-blown recovery is afoot. China’s GDP grew at 7% in the second quarter and its central government says it expects an even better number for the second half. A number of economists expect positive GDP in the U.S. in the fourth quarter even though the growth will be muted.
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