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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (76015)	2/16/2000 9:58:00 PM
From: Spekulatius	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

I know both BR and UCL but do not like them too much. BR has high quality gas reserves and fairly low debt but stodgy management. UCL's problem also seems to be the management, the heavy bet on Asia was ill fated. From the smaller players,I like the very nimble EOG and I believe that the smaller integrated players MRO and especially COCb represent a good value. I believe that EOG may be the best bet right now, if one likes the energy stocks at all...

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (76015)	3/15/2000 1:05:00 AM
From: Spekulatius	Respond to of 132070

Oil & gas group MRo vs. UCL After watching the prices at the gas pump, I decided to research the oil companies one more time again. I tried to gain some insight by comparing the last Q4 reports. The companies have similar size and can be compared quite well. Here we are: Company MRO UCL Market Cap 7.7B$ 6.7B$ Stock price 24.5$ 27.5$ Liquid Prod. 217K 180K (B/day) Gas Prod. 1.3M 1.86M (CF/day) Upstream Earnings (Q4) 257M$ 97M$ Upstream Earnings (Y99) 618M$ 113M$ Its just seams to me that MRo wins in every aspect, and MRO owns very well managed downstream assets, while UCL is almost exclusively upstream. It seams that UCL's production costs are too high, so they cannot earn money on their upstream operations. I am not sure if a bet on UCL is a good one unless we see a takeover. I also looked at OXY, as I did many times before.It always looks cheap until you look a bit deeper. During the last few years, they have the habit of buying upstream assets when crude prices are high - the Elk field in 1997 and Altura in 2000.No,Iam not betting on this one. Nevertheless, I am surprised to oil stocks at the same level then 12 month ago with the crude oil prices up 3fold. This must be the new economy but cash flow is cash flow...or ?