Hi Lazarre,
I'm Canadian and have concentrated until recently, on smaller cap Canadian O&G exploration/production companies, most of which are almost unknown outside of Canada.
I reviewed my strategy about a month ago and changed over into mid-cap stocks, as I could see that the small cap guys were being ignored and were unlikley ot get taken over by larger US firms.
I'm not sure what size you are interested in and I know little about US utility companies excepting a few but I'll gladly let you know what I have and why, briefly.
I own Purcell Energy, who have a 25% interest in 2 of the largest gas wells ever completed in North America. the operator is Chevron and these two wells produce up to 70mmcf/day ... each. Purcell (T.PEL) also has 60% of an adjacent smaller well of about 15mmcf/d, which will come on stream in January provided even more cashflow. They are currently in JV elsewhere with Talisman, who are very successful in all areas of the globe. Stock price has unfortunately not reflected the increases in NG price to date and is testing my patience right now.
I also have Berkley (T.BKP), who are leading a JV of many smaller companies in East Lost Hills in central California right now and seem to be having success in very deep wells into Temblor formation. They are also involved in NWT with Chevron and Purcell and have good cashflow coming up next year. Stock has suffered a bit from previous bad hedging, which has now expired but is perking up right now.
I also have Velvet (T.VLV) which is a smaller mixed oil/gas player who have good success in finding oil and cashflow to spare with the strong pricing just now, which I believe will continue for a lengthy period.
All of the above are profitable, have good cash flow and a debt/cashflow ration which is well within conservative range, other than BKP who have larger debt.
I am not familiar with the US O&G scene but have heard good things in passing of Murphy Oil, Anadarko and Apache, who are bigger than the Canucks above. Apache recently bought some sizeable properties and production facilites here from Shell Canada. Calpine also bought out TriGas of Canada recently for their NG pools and properties.
These stocks I hold are not large cap companies, like Shell or Chevron, so do your own DD but they are profitable and may be targets for takeover or fairly rapid expansion in JV situations.
Larger Cdn. Companies in the O&G E&P field would be Anderson Exploration, Talisman, Canadian Natural Resources, Alberta Energy and Canadian Hunter. There are lots of them and some have extensive operations in the USA.
I have stressed NG over oil and look for good revenues and aggressive exploration to provide the cashflow to reduce debt and facilitate expansion.
A good site for all sorts of info and message boards is Stockhouse.ca, which interlocks with Stockhouse.com. Look for update columns from Peter McKenzie-Brown, who covers the Canadian oil/gas scene pretty well and provides some good leads.
Try an older column
stockhouse.ca
for a global look at what is happening here.
Check out the whole East Lost Hills scene at *ELH on Stockhouse.ca, it's very interesting and a hoot at times.
good luck,
'jaggs
PS: I do have one tech stock, which goes without saying, is my biggest loser. :( |
