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Gold/Mining/Energy : Strictly: Drilling and oil-field services -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BigBull who wrote (48715)	8/1/1999 9:22:00 PM
From: BigBull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

PDE reports: ''During the second quarter, we began to see significant results from our restructuring efforts earlier this year,'' commented Paul A. Bragg, President and Chief Executive Officer. ''Later this year, and in 2000, we will benefit from the commencement of operations of our two newly-built drillships, the Pride Africa and the Pride Angola. We are encouraged by the continuing strength of oil and gas commodity prices. If favorable commodity prices are sustained, we expect to experience increased drilling and workover activity levels over the next few quarters" biz.yahoo.com

To: BigBull who wrote (48715)	8/1/1999 10:17:00 PM
From: SliderOnTheBlack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

Damn.... Bull you out did yourself (VBG)... nice post. Bottomline - everything in the Oilpatch will be substantially higher down the road. There will be few losers. Thankfully; investing here is now about picking the best of the best - winners; and not about trying to make ''some'' money, or to preserve capital (been there - done that...). Great points Bull. Anyone who makes the right call on what the Oil Majors are going to do - is going to make lots of Ca$h ! Unfortunately; I think that the Street does have the inside ''ear'' in this case... but, we can watch Rig counts and with the likes of Big Dog keeping his finely tuned ear to the ground on dayrates and sentiment changes within the industry - we be looking to do some heavy hitting here shortly (VBG). I'm still comfy in my small/mid cap E&P's vs. the driller/service stocks right now for the short term - still 100% E&P's; but I have to preface my comments - that I am an aggressive trader here, willing to take on much more risk than the average investor needs to, or should... There are some really cheap stocks here like VRC, GLBL, HOFF, TMAR, FGI/HLX, GIFI, UFAB - these are hard to go wrong on here longterm... Stocks like RIG PGO CAM VTS et al surely have some significant, if not dramatic upside from here. There has even been some analyst commentary that this next upturn in the Oilpatch is going to be ''bigger and more profitable'' than the 97-98 run up ! Who knows - maybe OSX 160- 175 by 2001 ? I'll tell you what I am contemplating here... if we see OPEC get their way and Oil goes up another $2 and Nat Gas closes in on $3 and if we see concrete Asian demand growth - TO THE MOON - ALICE ! - call options could be lucrative beyond belief here ... I'd like to see a shakeout here; some basing into the face of still rising commodity prices - then grab some cheap calls in Nov.-Dec. looking out to say April/May 2000. I'm hoping for one ''golden goose'' call option opportunity. Look how FGI, CXIPY & VTS spiked during very short timeframes on the last run up.... some serious moolah to be made if one times this play correctly - s e r i o u s c a s h !

To: BigBull who wrote (48715)	8/1/1999 10:42:00 PM
From: Aggie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95453

Big Bull, good evening, My two cents worth, from the perspective of Big Oil (I work for one of the smaller integrated E&P's). Very few of the large companies have the will to push aside company culture in order to effect rapid changes to budget. Most of the E&P's are beholden to year-end reporting and the share holders, and hence are inclined to observe their quarterly plans. When partners are involved, the complexities of deviating from the budget increase substantially. This is one of my biggest gripes about working for a big E&P. We have prospects on the table which we know we will be drilling in the next 3 years, but we don't have the will to drill them now and suspend them until they're needed - even though, when figuring the deep discounts available over the past few months and including the time value of money, it would be markedly cheaper to do so. Well, that's life. Many of the majors (mine included) have taken this opportunity to shop the fire sales, like Brazil, and add acreage to the portfolio. But I believe it will be the large independents that stoke the furnace first and begin ambitious programs to consolidate their market share and take advantage of the low rig and service rates before they fully recover. I look for the independents to be picking up rigs on an ad hoc basis starting around October/November, (that's when I predict a measurable uptick in the utilization rate), then strong and sustained recovery starting around next April. Regards, Aggie