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

To: Big Dog who wrote (35585)	1/21/1999 5:14:00 PM
From: Broken_Clock	Respond to of 95453

After seeing the stature of the Dog in real life, I have decided that DukeDog is gonna make more sense...-g- ala John Wayne.

To: Big Dog who wrote (35585)	1/21/1999 5:25:00 PM
From: Douglas V. Fant	Respond to of 95453

Big Dog, CBS Marketwatch article.... Oil boom ahead? By Tom Bemis, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 6:52 PM ET Jan 19, 1999 Futures Movers Grandma grew up in the oil country of Pennsylvania. If she had been a particularly good little girl, the story goes, she was given the honor of dropping nitroglycerin down the well holes to loosen up the rock far below and encourage the oil to flow. It must have made a really nice "boom!" Regrettably the family lease has long since played out. But I recently inherited some shares of Exxon thanks to Grandma. And I have to think integrated oil stocks may be on their way to a pretty nice "boom" of their own. New lows After all, cheap oil is as much an opportunity for a fully integrated oil company as it is for any other manufacturer. (Oil prices as measured by New York futures contracts recently touched a 12-year low.) Clearly Exxon's management thinks so, since it went out and offered a paltry $75 billion for Mobil to get all those nice proven reserves. Yet all I seem to hear is doom and gloom. "Oil's never going to stop falling." "There's going to be lots of consolidation, but it'll be years before things turn around." And so on. I just don't get it. People don't stop using oil because it's cheap. They use more of it. Even if it will flow more freely thanks to high-tech exploration platforms in the North Sea. Look at all those gas guzzling sport utility vehicles. And what about Asia? Cheap labor? Cheap energy? Sounds like the raw inputs for an economic recovery to me. Super majors "I think that we are near a bottom (in oil prices)," Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Douglas Terreson said. However, "it's going to be a gradual recovery." Terreson sees West Texas intermediate crude moving to $15.50 a barrel this year, up from $12.10 recently. The oil industry is still headed for a major shakeout, with thousands of layoff announcements still ahead, and billions in write-offs yet to come, Terreson said. In that environment Terreson thinks a lot of the Exxon Mobil deal, and British Petroleum's acquisition of Amoco. "It's a super major world" Terreson said. "We have BP Amoco and Exxon and Mobil as strong buys." Screen play A recent scan of oil stocks with the CBS MarketWatch Stock Screener -- powered by Hoovers -- puts lovable Exxon at a PE of around 24. Oh. Did I mention they pay a dividend, too? If that doesn't grab you though, you can look at Texaco with a PE of around 20, or Arco at 13.2. Cheap by comparison with the other players. Neither makes the super major cut, however. The list is getting shorter though, since BP's acquisition of Amoco just got clearance. Even if it takes a year for oil to turn around, or two, I've still got to believe this is a more stable investment than those wild-eyed Internet stocks. After all, oil's got staying power, as grandma knew so well. Company Ticker PE Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (RD) 42.2 The "Shell" Transport and Trading Co. Plc (SC) 37.4 Elf Aquitaine (ELF) 30.9 Mobil Corp. (MOB) 27.0 BP Amoco Plc. (BPA) 25.0 Repsol, S.A. (REP) 24.4 Exxon Corp. (XON) 23.8 Chevron Corp. (CHV) 21.8 TOTAL SA (TOT) 20.6 Texaco Inc. (TX) 19.9 ENI S.p.A. (E) 17.5 Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARC) 13.2