To: Claude Cormier who wrote (8370 ) 7/25/2001 5:30:54 PM From: Richard Saunders Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 24922 Claude - forward-look. Not sure if it's consensus or not but, imo, sledding ahead will be tougher than previous year. Yr.-over-yr. numbers will be hard to improve upon for many situations. 2Q numbers are just starting to trickle out now and it appears that bottomline numbers are off somewhere in the range of 25%'ish vs 1Q2001. You know about commodity prices. Things like increased field costs, royalties, taxables, etc. have also made an impact. You can also see what that has done to the share prices of oil servicers and general oil&gas producers........ Much of the hoopla in the earlier part of the year focussed around the wonderful pricing (not for consumers) that natural gas would enjoy. Today around 14:00 ET when the AGA gas build number was released some gassier situations seemed to "recover" a touch. General gas storage concerns which seemed to be sparking much of the previous bullish bantering have changed quite a bit over the past several+ months. Here's a link to some recent info. which visually tells a tale...... highlandenergy.com OPEC's sounds about wanting to keep oil prices within their targetted price band seems to be working....so far. Question remains how much production needs to be lanced. Current number indicates OPEC will take about 1 mil. bbls/day off the mkt. however some pundits feel that it will take double that in order to justify current'ish prices. Interesting times for sure. dismal.com Thing that I'm trying to watch for is general sense of capital spending plans in the oilpatch. So far the words happening still seem to be encouraging if one listens to the likes of Pan. Canadian, Alberta Energy, Petro Canada, etc. Some folks think that the Philly Oil Services Index is also a bit of a leading indicator for the bigger N.A. picture oilpatch. If so, what is it indicating? maybe some of the global economy stuff is causing some to see the glass half empty.... stockcharts.com [w,a]dbclnimy[dd][pb50!b100!b200!d30,2!f][vc60][iut!La12,26,9!Lc20!Ll14!Lh14,3!Li14,3!Lb14!Lf!Lk14 Opinion? Jack be nimble. Is this "correction" over? opinion again -- depends on what general economic engines as well as weather are ready to deal in the days ahead. I'd argue that a fair jag of the momentum dollars left the sector back in the very late spring if they already hadn't vacated in December. With the somewhat clouded outlook ahead an optimist could argue that a person probably still has time to pick & choose where they want to be (if at all?) in the sector. Key concern for many will be liquidity, especially with the small jrs./micros. It will also be interesting to see how some of the ex-cashed-up mgmt. groups are thinking after summer holidays and how well they will be received by "investors" if equity thoughts are floated.......