| Thema | Posts | Stand | |
| Archivierte Beiträge bis 10. Juli 2001 | 20 | 10.7. - 23:54 |
| Archivierte Beiträge bis 27. März 2001 | 20 | 27.3. - 17:58 |
| j_r_ewing - Dienstag, 10. Juli 2001 - 17:28 |
| Das Öl-Angebot wäre also gar nicht das Problem ? |
| mib - Dienstag, 10. Juli 2001 - 23:50 |
| nich sooo schoen: " Oil supplies in small surprise rise By Myra P. Saefong, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 5:12 PM ET July 10, 2001 NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- A key report released late Tuesday said last week's U.S. crude supplies climbed, contrary to most analysts' estimates, and gasoline inventories rose less than expected. FRONT PAGE NEWS U.S. techs slammed as warnings weigh Malone resigns from AT&T board Merrill puts limits on analysts' holdings Amerada Hess to buy Triton Energy for $3.2 billion Market news and more! Sign up to receive FREE email newsletters Get the latest news 24 hours a day from our 100-person news team. After the market closed, the American Petroleum Institute said crude supplies unexpectedly rose by 909,000 barrels during the week ended July 6. On average, analysts polled by Bridge News expected a drop of as much as 3 million barrels. Phil Flynn, Alaron.com's senior energy analyst, said the rise in crude inventories was "not huge," even though most analysts were looking for a decline in stocks. Gasoline inventories rose by 382,000 barrels last week, the API said, well below the average Bridge New-polled analyst estimate for a rise of up to 3 million barrels. Refiners are still operating at an incredible rate, Flynn said. Refinery production levels held up at 96.6 percent of capacity last week, according to the API data. Still, "gasoline stocks didn't build by that much," reflecting reasonable demand, Flynn said. In after-hours trading shortly after the data were released, August crude fell by 14 cents to $27.35 a barrel. August unleaded gasoline slipped by 0.1 cent to 72.61 cents a gallon. August heating oil eased by 0.83 cent to 71.5 cents a gallon. The API also reported that distillate supplies, which include heating oil, climbed by more than 3 million barrels in the latest week, compared to an expected rise of between 1 million and 2 million barrels. The weaker-than-usual demand for gasoline has allowed refiners to focus their attention on building distillate stocks in time for the winter season, Flynn said. During the regular trading session Tuesday, crude futures prices closed lower, pressured by news that Iraq resumed its global oil exports. See full story. " |
| mib - Dienstag, 10. Juli 2001 - 23:54 |
| also im Moment eine gute Kaufgelegenheit fuer PDS, NBR, KEG, UNT, etc??? " Tuesday July 10, 5:44 pm Eastern Time U.S. firms say no plans yet to cut gas drilling By Andrew Kelly HOUSTON, July 10 (Reuters) - U.S. energy exploration and production companies said Tuesday they had no plans for the time being to ease off drilling for natural gas, despite a big drop in prices this year amid signs supply is running ahead of demand as the nation's economy continues to slow down. ADVERTISEMENT ``We are not cutting back at this point on drilling or production,'' said Teresa Wong, a spokeswoman at Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:APC - news), which has led a surge in U.S. natural gas drilling over the last 18 months. Apache Corp.(NYSE:APA - news), EOG Resources Inc.(NYSE:EOG - news), Devon Energy Corp.(AMEX:DVN - news) and Burlington Resources Inc. (NYSE:BR - news) also said they were hanging tight, at least for the time being. ``Our budget for worldwide drilling is about $1.1 billion this year and at the moment we haven't cut that,'' said Apache spokesman Tony Lentini. But Apache always keeps its budget under review in case any fine-tuning is needed, he added. Late last December, benchmark U.S. natural gas prices hit a record high of just over $10 per thousand cubic feet as producers struggled to keep up with winter demand for fuel to heat homes. Analysts forecast gas prices were likely to remain high for several years because of limited supplies and growing use of the clean-burning fuel in electricity generation plants. Producers, working flat out, eventually did manage to increase domestic supplies and imports from Canada continued to rise, but the combination of high prices earlier in the year and the slowdown in economic activity has eaten away at demand. HEADING FOR A GAS GLUT? Gas prices fell below $3.50 per thousand cubic feet last month for the first time in over a year and recent hefty increases in weekly gas storage injections have led to predictions the nation may face a gas glut later this year. Analysts have been trimming their gas price forecasts for the next 18 months, which until recently typically stood at $4 to $5, to a range of $3 to $3.50 and many have forecast companies will cut back on gas drilling in response to the drop in prices. Lehman Brothers said in a research report this week it now expects domestic drilling expenditure in the United States to show a year-on-year decline of 5 percent in 2002, having previously forecast an increase of 10 percent. Merrill Lynch also referred in a research report to the, ``potential for lower than expected natural gas drilling over the next two to three quarters''. But some of the most active gas drillers said their plans were not contingent on the gas prices of $4 or more that had prevailed until a few weeks ago. ``We run our economics at $2.75 gas and $22 oil, so we are still fine from a commodity price perspective,'' said Maire Baldwin of EOG Resources. Burlington Resources spokesman James Bartlett said his company did not anticipate any cutback in its drilling program during the balance of this year. ``Even though prices are off their peaks, they're still very good when you look at the long-term price trends for natural gas,'' he said. " |
| mib - Mittwoch, 11. Juli 2001 - 15:46 |
| angeblich sind die DOE Daten gerade rausgekommen, die eigentlich den API Zahlen sehr aehnlich sein sollten. Unter Vorbehalt: " crude down 2.9million gasoline down 100,000 distillates up in line with api " Riesenunterschied zu den API Zahlen beim crude! Fast hat man den Eindruck, dass da gemauschelt wird....... ...mal sehen wie die Oelfutures reagieren.... |
| mib - Mittwoch, 11. Juli 2001 - 20:52 |
| briefing.com: " 14:32 ET Oil Services Group: : Think the pain in the tech sector has been bad lately? Well, with few exceptions, techs faring much better than oil services group over last couple months... Unlike in tech, the decline in the oil services sector comes at a time when business conditions are as good as they've been in years... Day rates and utilization figures are very high... End result will be exceptionally strong Q2 earnings numbers... But none of this seems to matter to investors... What does matter is that crude prices and natural gas prices are trending lower, as global economic slowdown has resulted in softer than expected demand... Talk of $3 per gallon prices at the pump died even faster than the stocks... In the Chicagoland area gasoline prices have fallen by more than $0.70 per gallon over the past several weeks (much to the delight of SUV owners)... Last night's API data showing a surprising jump in crude inventories last week has kept the group on the defensive, with the Oil Services Index (OSX) down another 4.3%... One thing you can say about sell-side analysts in the oil path -- their much more proactive than their tech brethren, as several analysts have downgraded group over past couple of weeks on assumption that best days are behind the industry... Mind you crude remains above $25 bbl (though barely), the energy crisis in CA hasn't gone away, OPEC is likely to cut production if crude slips below $22 bbl, there's been no slowing in capex spending by major oil companies and there's not likely to be any as long as crude remains above $22 bbl area, and Q3 guidance is likely to be very bullish... Clearly, crude's upside is limited as long as the global economy continues to contract... However, with early signs that the US economy has at least bottomed and the upcoming barrage of good earnings news, now might not be a bad time for try and play a corrective bounce... Listed below is a sample of the recent carnage plus some Q2/FY01 earnings info. Company Current Price % Drop from May Highs 52-wk Lows CYQ2 Est. with % Change Date Co. to Report CYQ2 Results FY01 Est. with % Change Baker Hughes (BHI) 31.11 (-1.11) 35.5% 30.0625 $0.27 (+125%) 7/26 $1.19 (+98%) BJ Services (BJS) 23.84 (-1.28) 41.5% 23.38* $0.49 (+206%) 7/24 $1.92 (+174%) Cooper Cameron (CAM) 52.11 (-2.24) 28.6% 46.55 $0.46 (+28%) 7/30 $2.18 (+41%) Global Marine (GLM) 16.42 (-0.73) 43.4% 16.12* $0.34 (+113%) 7/17 $1.39 (+132%) Halliburton (HAL) 32.11 (-1.18) 34.8% 31.20* $0.30 (+150%) 7/25 $1.29 (+126%) Nabors (NBR) 31.44 (-1.15) 47.6% 30.77* $0.58 (+263%) 7/24 $2.51 (+185%) Noble (NE) 29.48 (-1.38) 39.7% 27.25 $0.50 (+56%) 7/26 $2.24 (+84%) Sclumberger (SLB) 49.55 (-1.35) 28.4% 48.70* $0.38 (+41%) 7/18 $1.75 (+38%) Smith Intl (SII) 55.52 (-2.70) 34.3% 54.52* $0.72 (+140%) 7/18 $3.11 (+114%) Transocean (RIG) 38.80 (-0.75) 32.7% 34.37 $0.25 (+47%) 7/31 $1.36 (+103%) * 52-wk lows established today. -- Robert Walberg, Briefing.com " |
| mib - Sonntag, 15. Juli 2001 - 01:58 |
| Energy: The crisis has only just begun U.S. recovery will tax gas and oil production, analysts say By Martin Cej & Lisa Sanders, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 7:45 PM ET July 13, 2001 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- If the U.S. energy crisis is over, someone failed to inform the people who ought to know best. From Houston to Calgary to London, oil and gas chief executives are busier than they've been in decades. FRONT PAGE NEWS Earnings to provide the key It's Greenspan's week Capitol Hill airs concerns about online wagering Is your cell phone spying on you? Market news and more! Sign up to receive FREE email newsletters Get the latest news 24 hours a day from our 100-person news team. North America's petroleum industry has seen five multibillion-dollar takeovers in the last two months, and a score of smaller acquisitions, and there's no sign that trend is slowing down. See related story on merger boom. Well drilling and rig usage are at all-time highs and oilfield services companies are advertising to fill thousands of vacant positions, although their stock prices have slipped lately. See related story on oil services group. Indeed, if consumers and investors took a closer look at the petroleum industry these days, they wouldn't see a shamed bunch bracing for the end of the most recent energy boom-and-bust cycle. Instead, they would espy a throng of exploration and production companies behaving like marathoners, jostling and elbowing for position ahead of a long and profitable race. "Technically, the energy crunch has not even begun," said Christopher Ellinghaus, a principal at New York-based investment bank Williams Capital Group. Ellinghaus and others argue that a relatively mild North American summer, compounded by a slowing economy and falling commodity prices, have created a false all-clear perception about the supply-and-demand disparity that drove gas prices to record highs, prompted rolling blackouts in some states and sent one California utility into bankruptcy this winter. See related story on power companies. A willful and potentially dangerous complacency has overtaken consumers after months of higher bills, dimming lights and political finger-pointing, analysts say. "I don't know if we have the national will to solve it," said Bob Gillon, vice president and analyst at John S. Herold, an energy research firm. "Every time that it appears the immediate crisis has been solved, there's a tendency for the issue to go very far back in the public's consciousness." New plants Consumers and politicians point to a multitude of new power generation facilities going into development in the next two or three years that appear sufficient to meet the growing energy needs of the world's largest economy. Yet with gas supply unlikely to expand quickly enough to fuel those plants, Americans may be facing years -- not just few quarters -- of occasional blackouts. The U.S. manufacturing economy has sunk into recession, forcing the closure of plants and the shuttering of offices. Aluminum smelters, fertilizer factories, telecommunications equipment manufacturing facilities and dot-com offices have closed their doors in recent quarters. Record-high natural gas prices prompted many industrial facilities and electricity generating plants to switch over to other fuels for their energy needs. To be sure, consumers have some cause to feel optimistic, at least in the near term. U.S. natural gas storage operators have injected about 13 billion cubic feet a day of gas into storage since April 1, almost double last year's rate of 7 billion cubic feet per day, according to the American Gas Association. That has pushed inventories 185 billion cubic feet above last year's levels. According to the AGA, Americans consumed 22,775 billion cubic feet of gas in 2000, an increase of 4.9 percent over 1999. In other words, much of the gas going into storage now is gas that would have been consumed a year ago by the normal functioning of a robust economy. So, if the nation's economy can right itself in the final quarter of this year and hits its stride midway through 2002, as most economists expect, U.S. consumers will likely find themselves facing price hikes and blackouts similar to those suffered through the winter. "If the economy is going to get better, we'll be back to the shortage problem again," said Bill Church, portfolio manager of the SG Cowen Small-Cap group. History lessons But even if there's plenty of gas in storage to meet the demand spikes seen in the recent past, the apologetic mantra hummed by a legion of technology fund managers these days holds true in this instance: past performance is no guarantee of future results. "We can build all sorts of energy plants, but when the economy recovers there'll be a lot of competition for that gas," Ellinghaus said. "The number of plants in development for the next five years would require a 50 percent increase in the supply of natural gas." Unfortunately, natural gas production rose just 2.4 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And that was a boom year for the industry. "A record number of gas wells are being drilled right now and that has helped to alleviate the imbalance, but the trend has not gone away," said Greg Stringham, vice president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "There have been very moderate temperatures in North America recently, and that has allowed a lot of gas that would normally be used for electricity generation to go into storage." So far this year, Canada has provided 15.4 percent of the total crude oil imports into the United States, compared with 14.6 percent from Saudi Arabia and 11.5 percent from Mexico, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Canadian natural gas already accounts for about 94 percent of the gas the U.S. imports. Dictating demand Analysts at Raymond James & Associates say the volume of gas in storage will approach historically normal levels by the end of the summer injection season. Raymond James adds, however, that the demand side of the equation is still the primary factor determining whether a more severe and enduring energy crunch lies ahead. An improving economy, new electricity generating facilities and the potential for surprise cold snaps and heat waves will all take their toll on supplies. Stringham cautions that one "strong heat wave would have a tremendous impact." And don't bet President Bush's aggressive energy plan will yield results anytime soon. The White House is powerful, but so is the U.S. environmental lobby. And the oil and gas beneath the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, where Bush wants to allow drilling, in the northeast corner of the state is a long way away geographically and developmentally. While it's true that there are massive natural gas reserves beneath the Beaufort Sea off the northern coasts of Alaska and the Yukon Territory, and U.S. companies such as Conoco (COCA: news, msgs, alerts) have a firm foothold there, it will take years for that gas to get to market. "The infrastructure doesn't exist yet," Stringham said. "The gas has to get to the hub, and the fastest estimates for delivery are in five to seven years." The people poised to benefit most from the demand for northern gas in the next few years are not consumers but shareholders of companies such as Mexico's Tamsa (TAM: news, msgs, alerts) , which builds the seamless pipe for gas pipelines, and oilfield services companies including Halliburton (HAL: news, msgs, alerts) , Schlumberger (SLB: news, msgs, alerts) and Precision Drilling (PDS: news, msgs, alerts) . Petroleum producers focused on gas production such as Anadarko (APC: news, msgs, alerts) , Apache (APA: news, msgs, alerts) and Canada's Alberta Energy (AOG: news, msgs, alerts) are also likely to see their earnings continue to grow for years to come. Ellinghaus of Williams Capital also points to a handful of electricity generators, including Calpine, Duke and Dynegy that will help keep investors' portfolios warm in the coming quarters, even as consumers shiver in the dark. "The structural issues on the U.S. energy side have not been addressed," warned Stringham of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "There is potential for a much bigger crisis than they've had." Martin Cej is global markets editor for CBS.MarketWatch.com in San Francisco. Lisa Sanders is a Dallas-based reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com. |
| mib - Sonntag, 15. Juli 2001 - 02:00 |
| Oil-service stocks: Why the pressure? Capital spending has yet to slow, but market acts worried By Lisa Sanders, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 7:45 PM ET July 13, 2001 DALLAS (CBS.MW) -- In June, Salomon Smith Barney predicted that stocks in the Oil Service Industry Index would break out of its trading range of 110 to 130 in the next three to six months, giving life to the group's anemic market condition. But broad economic concerns and falling commodity prices have combined to push the industry index below 100. Though by no means an all-time low for the index -- its depths came from October 1998 to February 1999 at 53 and 54 -- its performance has surprised Salomon energy analyst Geoff Kieburtz. "The OSX promptly moved out of the 110 to 130 range, but on the opposite end of what we expected," Kieburtz said. "The experience of 1998 has made oil service investors skittish on broad economic concerns." Economic woes do appear to have conspired to pressure the OSX (OSX: news, msgs, alerts) . As economies contract, oil prices fall, exploration and production spending dries up, and oil service stocks get crushed, Kieburtz says. But the firm is still forecasting a 25 percent increase in spending on oil and gas exploration and production in 2001. That's assuming at least $20 per barrel of oil and $2.50 for natural gas. FRONT PAGE NEWS Earnings to provide the key It's Greenspan's week Capitol Hill airs concerns about online wagering Is your cell phone spying on you? Market news and more! Sign up to receive FREE email newsletters Get the latest news 24 hours a day from our 100-person news team. Natural gas hasn't traded below $2.50 since February 2000. Crude last traded below $20 in January of last year. The largest E&P companies such as ExxonMobil (XOM: news, msgs, alerts) and BP (BP: news, msgs, alerts) account for about two-thirds of total spending, Salomon said. Overreaction "Investors are overreacting to the expectation of a decline in U.S. drilling," said Arvind Sanger, oil service analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown. "What's being missed is that international spending by the oil companies is trending upward." Sanger predicts that earnings for oil-service stocks would hold up through the rest of the year on international spending. "It's a good time to get into the group since the prices are so low and there's so much nervousness," he said. "The reality isn't that bad." Salomon believes that the U.S. economy will stabilize in the third quarter and improve in the fourth. And yet, Kieburtz admits, it isn't wise to dismiss the bearish view altogether. If the economy fails to pull out of its tailspin, "Then this would not be a good group to invest in," Kieburtz said. He likes stocks such as Halliburton (HAL: news, msgs, alerts) for its international exposure and Cooper Cameron (CAM: news, msgs, alerts) because one of the leading products for the capital equipment manufacturer is a subsea production system, which gives the company exposure to deepwater field development and international activity. "Budgets for oil companies remain largely intact," Kieburtz said. Frost Securities analyst Gary Russell sounds a more bearish note, at least for the short-term. "Avoid the oilfield service stocks for now," said Russell, predicting that commodity prices will bottom later in the third quarter. "Be prepared to buy again within the next two months. At that time, Russell likes names such as BJ Services (BJS: news, msgs, alerts) , Weatherford International (WFT: news, msgs, alerts) and Horizon Offshore (HOFF: news, msgs, alerts) . His colleague Lewis Kreps is bullish on Nabors Industries (NBR: news, msgs, alerts) , Pride International (PDE: news, msgs, alerts) , and Santa Fe International (SDC: news, msgs, alerts) . Lisa Sanders is a Dallas-based reporter for CBS.MarketWatch.com. Latest Industry News |
| mib - Mittwoch, 18. Juli 2001 - 20:30 |
| http://www.msnbc.com/news/596965.asp |
| mib - Montag, 23. Juli 2001 - 16:20 |
| gute Infos!!! http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm |
| mib - Mittwoch, 1. August 2001 - 18:38 |
| wenn das stimmt, dann sollten Titel wie PDS bald alte Hoehen erklimmen koennen! " This update from our Aberdeen editors 10:32 GMT Canadian Oil and Natural Gas Drilling Ignores Price Drop By Dina O'Meara CALGARY, July 31 (Dow Jones) - Wet weather and more than softening commodity prices could cut historically high levels of oil and natural gas drilling in Western Canada, experts said Tuesday. Printer-friendly version E-mail to colleagues The oilpatch is so flush with cash, it is still ahead of the game even though the numbers have changed, said oil field services analyst Miles Lich. Lich, with energy investment firm Peters & Co. Limited in Calgary, predicts 19,400 oil and gas wells will be drilled in Canada's fuel basket this year, up from an estimated 16,500 wells drilled in 2000. The firm has downgraded its 2001 oil and gas average cash flow forecast to C$35 billion from C$41 billion because of falling commodity prices, but expects exploration and production companies to maintain or increase capital spending pegged at C$23 billion. "In this cycle, there's so much extra cash, you can keep capital programs the same or higher and still have lots of room," Lich said. Peters & Co. bases its predictions on a yearly average of US$26/b WTI and C$5.50/GJ of natural gas, reduced from US$27/b WTI and C$6.70/GJ forecast in the spring. Oil prices peaked this year at US$31.87/b West Texas Intermediate Feb. 8, with natural gas hitting C$13.30 per gigajoule Jan. 8. Since then prices have dropped, with oil and gas settling Tuesday at US$26.76/b and C$3.70/GJ respectively. Bad weather is about the only thing that could limit the number of wells being drilled in Western Canada, besides an utter collapse in commodity prices, experts said. Last week, heavy rains in northern Alberta closed down 67 out of 309 active drilling rigs. Two months earlier, 614 rigs of a 620-rig fleet were in service " |
| mib - Freitag, 3. August 2001 - 15:53 |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related Quotes APC 57.15 +0.00 delayed 20 mins - disclaimer Thursday August 2, 6:27 pm Eastern Time Anadarko sees gas prices rising if economy improves DENVER, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Natural gas prices will stay at current levels until the economy improves, but if supplies dip prices should move higher even in a weak economy, an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE:APC - news) executive said on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT Richard Sharples, president of Anadarko Energy Services Inc., said that in the long-term he expects natural gas prices to eventually move ``north'' of $4 per thousand cubic feet. ``But, I think you're going to be below that until you see some significant recovery in economic activity,'' he told an oil and gas conference here sponsored by EnerCom, Inc.; the American Stock Exchange; Netherland, Sewell and Associates Inc.; and Oil and Gas Investor magazine. But Sharples said prices could easily get back to $4 even in a slow economy if the ``anemic'' supply situation continues. He said while natural gas at $2.50 was not a sustainable price for the industry, $8 was not good for customers. ``We think somewhere between 5 and 7.5 bcf per day that we thought would be there isn't there,'' Sharples, who overseas marketing, said. He said the $8 price, a weaker-than-expected economy, and less extreme weather combined to lower demand from what had been expected a year ago. But he said natural gas at the current price is competitive with oil and temperatures in the 90s this week should help demand. ``We see the market coming back. We're a big gas trading house, about 4 bcf a day of physical gas. Our customers are coming back, customers that we know switched over the winter,'' he said. He attributed some of the reduced demand to cutbacks in the chemical industry. But he said U.S. ammonia plants are now re-opening because U.S. production is needed to keep fertilizer prices from skyrocketing. He also said the long-term outlook for liquid natural gas was strong. ``The United States is not the only potential market for LNG. There's a lot of potential market around the world, by folks who need it more than we do because they don't have any domestic supply,'' he said |
| mib - Donnerstag, 9. August 2001 - 22:12 |
| sehr, sehr lesenswert: " Canadian Business Mag 20 Aug 2001 1by: canal45 (M/Seattle) 08/09/01 04:00 pmMsg: 25278 of 25283 August 20, 2001 Cover The next gas crisisIf you thought the worst was over, get ready. Demand is up, supply is dwindling, and new finds are scarce. Here's how to hedge against the price hikes to comeBy ANDREW NIKIFORUKIf, like the vast majority of Canadians, you are dependent on natural gas to heat your home, ponder this thermostat-shattering truth for a moment. The largest natural gas find in Western Canada in the past 25 years is now playing out in a marshy area of northeastern BC near the Alberta border. Some analysts expect the Ladyfern field to gush about a trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, which to a layman's ear might sound like a lot of burning power. But Ladyfern probably contains just enough fuel to heat all the gas-fired homes in Canada for a year or two at most. And it's a clear freak of nature. A typical new gas well, in fact, produces barely enough gas to heat 90,000 homes for a year. Now add some more disturbing math to this natural gas picture. Canada now produces 6.2 tcf of gas a year, which just barely meets domestic and export demand. That represents about one-fifth of North America's gas consumption, which is still growing by 2% a year thanks to gas-fired electrical generation. "We need 6.2 Ladyferns a year to just keep up with gas consumption and stand still," explains Rob Woronuk, 60, a veteran Calgary gas analyst and one of the nation's independent natural gas watchdogs. "The really scary part is that we are finding a Ladyfern only every 25 years." Anyway you look at it, the glory days of cheap natural gas at $1.50 a gigajoule are over. Even though Canadian politicians may not be fretting as dramatically as President George W. Bush about future energy supplies and prices, they probably should be. Despite the stabilization of gas prices at about $4 a gigajoule (that's double the decade average), Canadian companies still can't find enough gas to keep. The whole demand-supply situation is so vulnerable that a major hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico or a terrorist attack, say, on the Alliance pipeline, which runs from northern BC through Alberta to Chicago, could abruptly send natural gas prices soaring back to the rude and shocking heights they reached last winter: US$10 a gigajoule. "Everything is in a crunch and has to be working 100%. We can't even afford too many plant turnarounds," says Woronuk. "We are in a dangerous situation." To assess just how volatile natural gas prices could be over the next year, Canadian Business talked to the same group of prescient experts we interviewed last July. Astute readers will recall that, at the time, our assembled analysts and gas veterans correctly predicted the phenomenal gas hike that clobbered the continent last winter—and three months before anyone else did. Their collective advice this time around is not as simple as "buy natural gas stocks," even though that's still a pretty good idea. After last year's price shocker, things have changed dramatically. In fact, the natural gas market has grown quirkier and murkier, and is now complicated by an enormous demand backlash as industrial and residential gas users suddenly rediscover the born-again economics of energy conservation. But the essential facts remain the same. "We are still finding less gas and consuming more," notes Calgary-based Mike Sawyer, executive director of the Citizen's Oil and Gas Council. "The fundamentals haven't changed." Just how tenuous this math has become was driven home last month by the staid provincial regulator, the Alberta Energy and Utility Board (EUB). Its supply outlook for 2001 to 2010 predicted that conventional natural gas production in Alberta, Canada's key producer, would peak by 2003 at 5.3 tcf and therefore decline by 2% a year for the next five years. Over the next decade, Alberta will have exported or burned up about three-quarters of its potential gas reserves. It's a case of goin… US analysts typically sum up the situation this way: "It's the geology, stupid." Alberta's richest gas fields are now mature and aging basins with little gas left. Ditto those in the US. New pools are smaller, and "new wells drilled today are exhibiting lower production rates and steeper decline rates," according to the EUB. "I'd like to see more reserves—that goes without saying," admits the EUB's top economist, Farhood Rahnama. "But the decline in reserves is just a fact of life." That fact, and all its political and social implications, will be complicated by rising industrial demand for gas, ironically driven by the oil sands, the source of Canada's future oil supply. By 2010, the oil sands will be hogging nearly 25% of Alberta's gas production in order to fire boilers to heat the water that melts the tarry sands into usable crude. Whether that's a wise use of natural gas hasn't been debated by any political body yet. But in real numbers, it simply means less gas for George W.—and pricier natural gas for you and me. The sobering realities will be reinforced by a much-awaited accounting of Canada's total gas resources (both onshore and offshore) due this September. That's when the Canadian Gas Potential Committee, a volunteer group of geologists and industry types, will release a 600-page report that will identify (in glowing color) what gas is left and where it is. (Unlike the efficient US Department of Energy, Canada's National Energy Board just doesn't have a handle on this crucial information.) The Alberta and BC governments have already ordered the $15,000 CD-ROM. The report, which will clearly confirm the tightness of supplies, "will make a lot of news," predicts Woronuk, one of its authors. Its data might also raise questions about the pace of development, the volume of US exports and the absence of any coherent energy policy in Canada. Meanwhile, the situation south of the border continues to grow bleaker. In spite of record drilling throughout the US, companies aren't finding much new gas in the dry plains of southern Texas or even the Gulf of Mexico. While the US Department of Energy predicts natural gas consumption will increase by 45% by 2015, in the past year, production has grown by barely 2%. Bush now wants to drill in national parks and on federal lands—even though the spoilage of natural monuments could squarely fail to ease the shortage. "It's like a treadmill," Skip Horvath, presidnet of the Natural Gas Supply Association, recently told The New York TImes. "You have to race faster and faster to keep it up." Martin Molyneaux, a leading gas analyst with Calgary's FirstEnergy Capital Corp., puts it a different way: "After six quarters in a row of industry going all out in Western Canada and the US, there is only one word to describe the result: disappointing." The disappointment is somewhat heightened by the difficult nature of options available to policy-makers. Even the sunniest projections don't predict arctic gas from Alaska or the Mackenzie Delta will reach southern markets until 2008 or 2010. And the US$20-billion price tag for what many are already calling the costliest construction project in the continent's history is enough to make most pipeline promoters think thrice, let alone twice. That undertaking might well involve two separate northern pipelines that might join outside of Edmonton, as well as the construction of another Chicago-bound pipeline. But even the Mackenzie Delta's gas is no panacea. What is now accessible holds no more gas than what Canada produces every year (6.2 tcf). "Is the Delta enough?" asks Woronuk. "Hell, no." Alternatives to natural gas are also costly and take time to develop. Although the US is looking seriously at liquid natural gas as well as coal-bed methane, the technology is expensive and the environmental ramifications formidable. The mysterious world of gas hydrates (gas locked in ice crystals in the ocean) holds the promise of offering limitless supplies, but no technology yet exists to tap them. As a result, conventional natural gas will likely remain the dominant energy source for some time to come—and at higher and higher prices. Current prices, however, don't reflect the persistent draining of continental natural gas reserves. Thanks to a decided drop in consumption among industrial gas users, prices have stabilized somewhat after last winter's rude heights. "I was mortified when I saw US$9 and US$10 gas prices last year," admits Molyneaux. "When you quadruple the price of a commodity, there is going to be a demand backlash—and it came at us like a truck." That truck came in three distinct styles: a US economic slowdown, mild summer weather and a revitalized conservation campaign that made a mockery of vice-president Dick Cheney's loud dismissal of energy efficiency. Last spring, after the run-up in natural gas prices, everybody from industrial plants to shopping malls started to look for ways to reduce their energy bills. Some set air conditioner thermostats higher, while others installed more energy-friendly windows. Others switched fuels. When gas prices hovered at about US$2, industries weren't terribly aware of their energy costs, says Molyneaux. "Now they are intimately aware." To date, the big benefactors have been coal, distillate fuel oil, nuclear power and wind producers. In fact, the doubling of gas prices has made wind a viable energy competitor for the first time, as well as the continent's fastest-growing energy source. Even Jim Gray, the venerable gas explorer and chairman of Canadian Hunter Exploration Ltd., has become a champion of demand-side awareness. Last year, he was the first executive (along with J. P. Anderson of Anderson Exploration Ltd.) to warn consumers about the coming price storm. But when that torrent put gas and electricity prices at Gray's Calgary condominium through the roof, his fellow tenants, mostly oil-patch types, studiously examined their costs. After learning that the average price of powering a 100-watt lightbulb for 24 hours a day for a year had gone from $40 to $130, Gray's condo neighbors got energy wise. They even replaced a furnace that burned gas at 35% efficiency with one rated at 80%. As a result, says Gray, "our overall energy consumption has gone down by 10%. Multiply that kind of decision-making by hundreds of thousands of people and you have a tremendous reallocation of resources." Gray now believes that kind of demand change will normalize natural gas prices at double their average (around the current $3 range) for some time to come. Such adjustments have also taken the price of Canadian Hunter stock (TSE: HTR) from a high of $46 to a low of $30 in the past six months. Gray thinks the big natural gas story for the next year will not be declining supplies, but ever more efficient gas conservation. "Energy consumption has dropped by 10% to 15% in California this year," he says. "North Americans are the most profligate and wasteful users of energy on the globe. There is a lot of room to move here." In other words, the equivalent of several untapped Ladyferns may simply be tapped by consumers as they buy more energy-efficient appliances or improve home designs. Not surprisingly, most energy efficiency experts are now booked a year in advance. Although the conservation backlash and cool summer weather have deflated the value of key gas stocks by as much as 50% in recent months, there's lots of room for investors to do some long-term planning. Molyneaux, for example, bullishly predicts prices will rise in the second quarter of next year. That's when reduced drilling due to lower prices should highlight North America's natural gas reality: there's more demand than gas. "We won't see US$9 or US$10 prices, but we will see high fours and low fives," Molyneaux says. Companies well leveraged to take advantage of this increase include Canadian Hunter (it has five of Western Canada's top-25 producing wells); Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. (TSE: AEC), a key Ladyfern player; and Nexen Inc. (TSE: NXY), which brought more gas onstream last year than it did in the preceding two years. Anderson Exploration (TSE: AXL) and Petro-Canada (TSE: PCA), which have both banked their futures on Mackenzie Delta reserves, also remain important gas producers. Canadian Business readers, of course, who took our advice last year in advance of runaway gas prices partook in some spectacular profit-making. Natural Resources Canada, for instance, estimates that natural gas plant sales jumped from $12 billion in 1998 to $41 billion this year. It expects revenue to fall to $28 billion by 2005 and then climb again to $34 billion in 2010, which, by any account, amounts to more steady profit-making. None of our experts, meanwhile, expect a repeat of last year's natural gas fiasco or what many pundits now dub "the perfect storm." The key element, of course, was declining supply. As well, US electrical power generators burned natural gas like water all last year, when drought lowered reservoirs and made hydro generation a no-go on the West Coast. As a consequence, the volume of natural gas stored underground hit all-time lows. Oil, normally an alternative fuel for natural gas, then hit US$34 a barrel, and California, one of the continent's big energy guzzlers, started experiencing blackouts. Cold weather followed as surely as night follows day, and by then Canadians were digging deeper into their pockets to pay for the natural gas storm brewing in their furnaces. As one federal report lamented, "everything that could happen to increase prices, did happen." This year, the elements are arrayed somewhat differently. "I don't think the situation will be replicated," says Larry Pratt, a longtime energy policy analyst in Edmonton, "even though we aren't replacing the gas we are using." Molyneaux agrees. "Once you shock people, it's hard to shock them a second and third time," he says. Both US and Canadian storage operators, for example, have now pumped gas into basins for winter usage at record levels. But winter storage is only a buffer, not a solution. Nevertheless, our batch of clear-eyed soothsayers all agree that consumers and investors alike must carefully watch the weather. A late-summer hot spell combined with a cold winter could produce an imperfect storm—and bring gas prices back to US$6 or higher. But most don't see any major price hurricanes until supply hits another serious demand crunch—which, as we've noted, could likely come in the second quarter of next year. That's when cheap conservation fixes will exhaust their possibilities and disappointing drilling results will highlight the essential math that produced the initial storm. "The direction is clear," concludes Woronuk. "There is not enough gas left in existing basins. It's going to get worse. That means demand has to go down or supply is going to be very, very tight." North America is still using more gas than it is finding. Concerted conservation drives and a softer economy may temporarily mask ever-dwindling supplies. A prolonged cold snap, though, could remind us of the reality sooner rather than later. You can count on rising prices to definitely affect your home and business heating bills—or your portfolio—early next year as natural gas abandons its image as a cheap staple and becomes, for better or worse, a premium good on the North American market. " |
| mib - Freitag, 10. August 2001 - 21:26 |
| und hier obiges jetzt auch als link: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/magazine_items/2001/aug20_01_thenext.shtml |
| mib - Donnerstag, 16. August 2001 - 04:13 |
| Heute endgueltig mal gute Neuigkeiten: Die AGA Zahlen waren SENSATIONELL niedrig (nur +3!). Prompt hat der sowieso ueberverkaufte Sektor einen starken Huepfer getan. Sehr interessant sehen SGR und CPN aus... Negativ ist natuerlich der schwaechere Dollar, der dem Auslandsdepot jetzt zu schaffen macht. Bin bin Sonntag im Kurzurlaub mit der Familie am Meer - Gruss - Mib |
| mib - Donnerstag, 6. September 2001 - 23:03 |
| Natural Gas Is Not Burned Out By Christopher Edmonds Special to TheStreet.com 09/06/2001 02:33 PM EDT Has natural gas gone up in flames? A quick look at current natural gas prices -- trading at less than $2.50 per million British Thermal Units, or mmBtu -- suggests the early year rally that pushed prices above $10 was nothing more than a short-lived bubble. Most say natural gas is destined to trade around its traditional hitching post, about $2, give or take a few pennies. However, while that forecast may be spot-on in the near term, the smart money is suggesting a different course in the coming year. Take the recent shopping spree by Devon Energy (DVN:NYSE - news - commentary), announcing two acquisitions to expand its natural gas holdings: First Devon agreed to purchase Mitchell Energy (MND:NYSE - news - commentary) and then it announced plans to acquire Calgary-based Anderson Exploration (AXN:NYSE - news - commentary), both at substantial premiums. Devon's chairman, industry veteran Larry Nichols, is clearly betting natural gas will come back. "The most meaningful thing about this deal is that Devon is a well-respected E&P company that is a savvy acquisition player," said Dan Pickering, director of research at Simmons & Co. and a member of the TSC Energy Roundtable. "They are seeing the same things that everyone else is seeing regarding building inventories and a sloppy gas market short term, and yet they go out and pay a premium." While it's easy to do deals in the energy arena when markets are strong, Devon's recent action is bold and, for investors, a sign that insiders believe in a strong future for natural gas. Disappearing Demand Even as analysts were suggesting a new era of $5-plus natural gas earlier this year, demand was quietly slipping away, eroding hopes for the new natural gas paradigm. "Funny things happen when you have an unfettered market and you see outlying prices," said Marshall Adkins, director of energy research at Raymond James and also a member of the TSC Energy Roundtable. "This is what we learned: When you take prices up as high as we did earlier this year, you get into no man's land regarding demand fundamentals. The summer demand for gas is not nearly as robust as we thought it would be." When natural gas prices soared early this year, industrial users switched to lower-cost fuels or, in the case of some aluminum and chemical companies, shuttered factories altogether. Data from Simmons & Co. show industrial demand for natural gas declined 21% year over year in the second quarter. "Any time you see commodity demand down 20%, you will have a noticeable price impact," Pickering noted. With demand pulled out from under it, gas prices slipped from above $6 to below $4 -- and just kept falling. The much ballyhooed summer savior for natural gas -- increased power generation -- never materialized. "What really crushed the gas markets in the past two or three months is that the supply of coal and nuclear power sharply reduced the demand for natural gas-fired generation," Adkins said. "Summer demand never materialized." Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain? No doubt, recent sub-$3 natural gas prices have investors concerned about the short-term future of natural gas and the companies that produce it. However, combined with strong oil and distillate prices, industrial demand for natural gas will likely pick up as companies that abandoned gas for less-expensive fuel earlier this year are lured back by moderate prices. Fuel switching to natural gas should help provide support for natural gas prices over time. "You could see sub-$2 gas but that would be very short term," Adkins said. "Demand will come back and I think the longer-term range will be $3.50 to $5.50 going out several years." How Low Can It Go? Pundits predict the future of natural gas Analyst/Firm Nat Gas Cycle Low Price Nat Gas Price Est. August, 2002 Marshall Adkins, Raymond James $2.50 $3.50 Tyler Dann, Banc of America Securities 2.28 3.25 Bryan Dutt, Ironman Energy Capital 2.29 3.50 Doug Hohertz, The Mitchell Group 2.25 3.75 Dan Pickering, Simmons & Co. 2.25 3.50 Average $2.31 $3.50 Source: TSC Energy Roundtable Other members of the TSC Energy Roundtable agreed. "In the short term, we probably have more gas than we need, which overwhelms longer-term issues, at least for now," Pickering said. However, those longer-term issues continue to paint a bullish story for natural gas. Demand is expected to grow by about 2%, while current natural gas production growth is closer to 1.5%. And, the plethora of power generation scheduled to come online in the next two years will put more pressure on supplies. "That will be a 3-4 bcf (billion cubic feet) increase in demand on top of a 60 bcf market," noted Simmons' power analyst and TSC Energy Roundtable member Jeff Dietert. "That is not insignificant." While the short-term picture is uncertain, one pundit said there is a clear message in Devon's recent acquisitions: We are much closer to the bottom than the top in the natural gas markets. Said Pickering, "You have to sit back and take notice and consider Devon views the longer-term situation as a tight gas market. And, if you are a company wanting to play in the longer term, these are the kinds of deal you have to do now." Longer-term investors may want to consider the same strategy. _______________________ AMEN! [Anm. Mib] |
| mib - Dienstag, 2. Oktober 2001 - 17:43 |
| http://moneycentral.msn.com/articles/invest/jubak/7703.asp?special=msn |
| mib - Mittwoch, 5. Juni 2002 - 21:11 |
| die beste Zusammenfassung, die ich seit langem gelesen habe!!!! aus USA today: 05/31/2002 - Updated 01:00 AM ET Crisis looms as demand booms for natural gas By George Hager, USA TODAY Grey Wolf Drilling A crew used the largest land-drilling rig in the USA to drill the Bighorn 8-35 in Wyoming. Power points Risks of liquefied natural gas minimal Energy scandals crimp deregulation LYSITE, Wyo. — What looks odd in this tiny town in the middle of Wyoming's vast Wind River Basin is all the windsocks. There's no operating airport here, so why all the fluorescent orange wind-direction indicators? It turns out that Burlington Resources wants you to know where upwind is at any given moment, because that's where you need to go — and fast — if there's a hydrogen sulfide leak from any of the six ultradeep natural gas wells Burlington and others have drilled near here into the nearly 5-mile-deep bedrock that holds one of the most prolific gas fields in the USA. Along with prodigious quantities of natural gas, what boils up out of the wells' specially made, high-alloy tubing is 126,000 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide, which can quickly kill you in concentrations of as little as 500-1,000 parts per million. Each visitor gets a mandatory safety lecture and a portable tank of emergency air. With U.S. production in inexorable decline, producers are increasingly turning to exotic wells like this one to try to keep up with Americans' burgeoning demand for natural gas. Gas burns much more cleanly than coal and, after any hydrogen sulfide has been stripped out of deep-well gas and turned into sulfur, it carries few of the safety worries that come with nuclear power. That makes it a premium, environmentally benign and increasingly popular fuel for homes, factories and electric utilities. Most new electrical generating plants are designed to burn gas, and 55% of American homes use it for heating or cooking, according to the American Gas Association. But while public worry tends to focus on supplies of crude oil and pump prices at gasoline stations, the real gas problem could be brewing in natural gas. Experts say falling U.S. production and the difficulties involved in getting new supplies from North America or abroad could make for a severe supply crunch at worst or highly volatile prices at best for the next several years. The chief trouble with natural gas is getting it. All but a tiny fraction of the gas that's used here has to come by pipeline from U.S. or Canadian wells. While more than half of U.S. oil comes in ships from foreign producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, it's much tougher to import natural gas, which has to be cooled to minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit and transported in special tankers to a handful of special terminals. "Here's the problem with natural gas," says Bill O'Grady, an energy futures analyst with A.G. Edwards in St. Louis. "There's lots of natural gas in the world, but there are no pipelines running from Kazakhstan to Los Angeles." That makes U.S. gas consumers critically dependent on U.S. production, and U.S. production is in a long-term decline that experts don't think will reverse. "We've been poking holes in the lower 48 since the 1920s," explains O'Grady, who notes that all the relatively easy gas-producing areas have long been picked over. Most of what's left are tough and expensive fields like the deep gas zone here. Long-term plans call for more gas from huge fields in remote parts of Canada or from Alaska's distant North Slope, but the pipeline that can bring that gas to the lower 48 — presuming it's ever built — is still seven to 10 years away. Another likely source is more imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which currently account for a little more than 1% of U.S. needs. But that means building or reactivating special LNG terminals, which will also take several years and could hit not-in-my-backyard resistance from surrounding communities. Worth the investment In Wyoming's Wind River Basin, where the prairie stretches in 50-mile vistas to the snow-covered Wind River Mountains, everything about the drilling and production operation is bigger than normal. A typical gas well goes about 11,000 feet deep and costs about $500,000 to $750,000 to drill, but Burlington Resources' just-drilled Bighorn 8-35 here went to 25,018 feet and will cost about $35 million before it's ready to produce gas, says Arnold Nall, Burlington's general manager for drilling. Drill bits alone run anywhere from $45,000 to $100,000 each, and some last barely a day or two as they grind through deep rock at a rate of as little as 1 or 2 feet an hour. At those prices, says Nall, "It's like putting a luxury car into the ground" every time the rig's roughnecks change a bit — a procedure that can take a day or more as the crew pulls 4 or 5 miles of drill pipe out of the hole, changes the bit and puts it all back in. It takes 50 to 55 bits to complete the hole. It took the crew about 300 days to drill the Bighorn 8-35, and it took the largest operating land-drilling rig in the USA — the mammoth, 200-foot-tall, 7,200-horsepower Grey Wolf 558 — to make the hole. The gas from the deep wells here contains about 12.5% hydrogen sulfide, and Burlington and its partners built a $480 million processing plant to strip out the hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide before sending the gas out to transmission pipelines. It's worth all the money and trouble. Though the Madden Field has just five producing wells out of the tens of thousands of gas wells in the USA, it produces almost 0.5% of the entire U.S. gas output. Each well can flow a net of about 30 million cubic feet of gas a day. At the mid-May price of about $3.60 per thousand cubic feet (Mcf), that's worth roughly $108,000 a day, or about $3.2 million a month. Each well is expected to last 25-30 years. Some analysts worry that U.S. gas consumers could be in for a rough ride as diminishing production and an increasingly volatile market make supplies dangerously tight or prices punishingly high — or both. Worries for consumers The best evidence for this is what happened during the winter of 2000-01, when short supplies drove prices up from their long-term average of about $2.25 per Mcf to more than $10 per Mcf at one point in January 2001. Driven by those extraordinary prices, drilling surged: According to oil-field supply company Baker Hughes, the number of rigs drilling for gas nearly tripled from a low of 362 in April 1999 to a peak of 1,068 in July 2001. "The entire industry knew: I drill gas wells, I get rich," says Mark Papa, chairman of EOG Resources, a large independent gas producer. "A huge effort was put in place to drill gas wells." But despite that effort, gas production barely budged. From 18.8 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 1999, domestic gas production crept up to 19.4 Tcf in 2001 — a 3% increase. "What in the world explains why you had to double gas well completions just to stay flat?" asks Matthew Simmons, chairman of energy investment bank Simmons & Co. "I think we're in very scary shape." Analysts are alarmed by the fact that gas wells peter out much more quickly now than they used to, thanks to technology that lets producers drain reservoirs more quickly and the fact that reservoirs tend to be smaller. Even Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan fretted about this phenomenon in a November 2001 speech, noting that new wells now give up 50% of their recoverable reserves in the first year of operation vs. 25% in the 1980s. As the economy recovers, Greenspan said, burgeoning gas demand "will be putting significant pressure on the reserve base." Supply crunch coming Some analysts say U.S. natural gas output is simply repeating the precipitous decline of lower 48 U.S. crude oil production, which peaked in 1969 at more than 9 million barrels a day has now fallen to less than 4 million barrels a day, forcing the USA to import more of its crude. Add a recovering economy, the chance of a hot summer or a cold winter, and the fact that strapped electrical utilities have turned to gas-fired plants to add enormous generating capacity that will compete for gas supplies, and pessimists see a serious gas crunch coming. Papa says forecasts show U.S. gas production falling 4% this year and demand whittling down the record amounts of gas in underground storage by the beginning of the heating season Nov. 1. That could lead to a supply crunch in both the USA and Canada by next year, he says. Simmons says the crunch could show up even sooner. "You have this unbelievable mountain of new power plants that assumed there would be plentiful natural gas," he says. But when prices fell back from $10 per Mcf in January 2001 to $2-$3 per Mcf last summer, drilling collapsed. "We're going to pay a painful price for that by the third or fourth quarter." Others insist the situation isn't quite as grim. "Some of the market will tune out if the price is too high," says Paul Ziff, CEO of energy consulting company Ziff Energy Group. Industrial users that can switch to oil will do so, and if that's not an option, some high-cost producers will simply shut down and ride out the price spike, as some aluminum producers did when prices hit $10 per Mcf. That would lower demand and help bring prices back down. Even so, Ziff says, the prospects for gas consumers are not without problems. "Our outlook is a lot of price volatility (for) the next several years," he says. |
| mib - Mittwoch, 12. Juni 2002 - 17:07 |
| ML: RESEARCH SUMMARIES:Intra-Day Special Note: Oil & Gas Producers 08:31am EDT 11-Jun-02 Merrill Lynch (Investor Support) AMCALL APA BR DVN EOG KM ML++ML++ML Merrill Lynch Global Securities Research ML++ML++ML RESEARCH SUMMARIES Intra-Day Special Note: Oil & Gas Producers Investor Support ******************************************************************************* Investors should assume that Merrill Lynch is seeking or will seek investment banking or other business relationships with the companies in this report. ******************************************************************************* Oil & Gas Producers o N.A. E&P stocks remain under selling pressure given ongoing 'at the margin' concerns about hydrocarbon demand, inventory overhang (oil and U.S. natural gas), natural gas productive capacity, and the economy. Many E&P stocks which had posted strong gains YTD have been in a give back mode. o The consolidation that this industry has experienced has been a double edged sword from an E&P stock market perspective: 1. Larger E&Ps should operate in a more fiscally prudent manner, and post 3%-5% organic volume growth rates. (That's good) 2. The consequence of this strategy is that most E&Ps, who have been acquisitive or drill bit risk averse is that they no longer receive the drill bit stock price option. 3. That change has caused the Street to myopically focus weekly on hydrocarbon inventory levels, which tend domestically to be better for oil than natural gas. 4. During the 'inbetween periods' for quarterly reporting, E&P stocks come under selling pressure given the lack of catalyst making corporate news. 5. So, the Street tends to spend more time making commodity price calls than differentiating companies on assets, strategies or management teams. o We continue to recommend that investors add to their E&P positions or establish new ones particularly if there are irrational market liquidations. o Why be bullish? The E&Ps, for the most part, appear to have simple accounting stories; the E&P consolidation is ongoing (we've lost 2 companies under coverage during the last month); wellhead natural gas production capacity continues to decline in N.A. given a dearth of producing property or PUD turnover and predictable exploration; the U.S. Fed remains in a stimulative or non contractive mode; and on a relative valuation basis, N.A. E&P stocks trade at 3x-6x 2002e P/DCFPS vs much higher multiples for the oilfields services (10+X) and integrateds (8x-10x). If the E&Ps actually execute their strategies, should they continue to get no market respect? o We believe our intermediate Strong Buy rated group offers good risk/reward. In the large caps: Apache (APA, $53.96, B-1-1-7) is our balanced producer, there are 3 gas stories (Burlington Resources (BR, $37.62, B-1-1-7), Devon Energy (DVN, $48, C-1-1-7), EOG Resources (EOG, $38.43, B-1-1-7)) and one more oily E&P (Kerr McGee (KMG, $54.97, B-1-1-7)), and one mid cap (Pogo Producing (PPP, $30.86, C-1-1-7)). In Canada, only our Seniors have intermediate term Strong Buy ratings (Encana (ECA, $29.13, C-1-1-7), Canadian Natural (YCNQ(Toronto), C$48.20, C-1-1-7), Nexen (NXY, $25.14, C-1-1-7) and Talisman (TLM, $43.75, D-1-1-7)). (J. Herrlin) |
| mib - Donnerstag, 11. Juli 2002 - 22:09 |
| from briefing.com: 10:33 ET Natural Gas Inventories : The Energy Information Administration reports that U.S. natural gas inventories rose 67 bcf last week. The Natural Gas Index (XNG) is down 0.9%. das ist immer noch zu hoch, um zu verhindern, dass die Erdgasspeicher voll(!) werden bis Ende des Sommers und verheisst fuer die NG Preise nichts gutes. Leider noch immer zu frueh, um XTO, ECA, KWK und DNR zu kaufen... Mib |