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

To: Frank Pembleton who wrote (92313)	7/16/2001 3:10:56 PM
From: Art Bechhoefer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 95453

As I noted earlier, the near term trend may be down, but the long term overall trend is up because new reserves are not replacing old ones as fast as they are being used up. For oil and gas producers, the main issue is whether current prices for crude and natural gas are sufficient to allow a reasonable profit. There may be some companies that want to develop new sources from tar sands and other difficult reserves. It's true that current prices probably won't encourage much development in that direction, unless someone has discovered a more economical way to extract oil from tar sands. But with crude oil stabilizing around U.S.$24 per barrel, plenty of producers will make reasonable profits, and those profits will be better than what is likely to occur in much of the high technology sector this year. So, looking broadly at profits, I would rather have a substantial position in oil producers, even though some people think the trend is down. Art