oil and gas

PLEASE NOTE: Next week, The Successful Investor, our newsletter that focuses on high-quality Canadian stocks, will reveal its #1 pick for 2012. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to profit. DEVON ENERGY CORP., $64.76, symbol DVN on New York, has agreed to sell a one-third interest in five shale oil and gas fields to giant Chinese state-owned petroleum and chemical company Sinopec (symbol SNP on New York). Shale oil and shale gas are trapped in rock formations. To extract them, companies must pump water and chemicals into the rock. This fractures the rock and releases the oil or gas....

Recovering global economies should boost oil and natural gas prices—although rising oil sands and shale gas production could hold back those increases. Imperial Oil’s large oil and gas reserves should last for decades. But the company also owns four refineries and operates 1,850 Esso gas stations. This diversification helps shield Imperial from volatile oil and gas prices and further cuts its risk. IMPERIAL OIL $46.03 (Toronto symbol IMO; Shares outstanding: 850.5 million; Market cap: $39.1 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Average; Dividend yield: 1.0%; www.imperialoil.ca) is a major integrated-oil company that gets most of its production from its oil sands projects in Alberta. Imperial also has conventional oil and natural-gas operations in western Canada, and it holds interests in offshore projects in Atlantic Canada. In the three months ended September 30, 2011, Imperial’s earnings jumped 105.5%, to $859 million, or $1.01 a share. A year earlier, it earned $418 million, or $0.49 a share. Imperial increased its oil sands production and benefited from rising oil prices and improved refinery profits. Revenue rose 35.8%, to $7.9 billion from $5.9 billion....

ARC RESOURCES $25.52 (Toronto symbol ARX; Shares outstanding: 287.6 million; Market cap: $7.3 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Speculative; Dividend yield: 4.7%; www.arcresources.com) produces oil and gas in western Canada. Its average daily production of 85,178 barrels of oil equivalent is weighted 67% to gas and 33% to oil. In the three months ended September 30, 2011, ARC’s cash flow per share rose 17.5%, to $0.74 from $0.63. That’s because the company raised its production. It also benefited from higher oil prices. ARC converted from a trust to a corporation on January 1, 2011, in response to Ottawa’s income-trust tax. However, ARC has $2.2 billion of tax pools that are letting it offset the tax and maintain its $0.10 monthly payout (it now yields 4.7%)....

The long-term outlook remains bright for emerging market economies and stocks. One of the best ways to profit from that growth is through low-fee exchange-traded funds (ETFs). ISHARES S&P INDIA NIFTY 50 INDEX FUND $20.44 (Nasdaq symbol INDY; buy or sell through brokers; us.ishares.com) is an ETF that aims to track the S&P CNX Nifty Index, which represents the 50 largest, most liquid Indian securities. The fund’s top holdings are Infosys Technologies (software), 9.5%; Reliance Industries Ltd. (conglomerate), 8.4%; ITC Ltd. (conglomerate), 7.7%; Housing Development Finance, 6.3%; ICICI Bank, 5.7%; HDFC Bank, 5.6%; Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (information technology), 4.2%; Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (conglomerate), 3.9%; Hindustan Unilever Ltd. (consumer products), 3.1%; and State Bank of India, 3.0%....

Pennsylvania-based Vanguard Group is one of the world’s largest investment-management companies. The group manages over $1.6 trillion U.S. in 170 mutual funds. Vanguard, which went into business in 1975, offers low-fee index mutual funds. Generally speaking, Canadians can’t buy units of mutual funds that are registered in the U.S., because they aren’t registered with provincial securities commissions. For that matter, some Canadian funds aren’t available in all provinces. Canadians can, however, buy Vanguard exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that trade on stock exchanges. We don’t recommend all of Vanguard’s ETFs, but here are two we do see as low-fee buys....

Equal Energy, $4.74, symbol EQU on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 34.7 million; Market cap: $164.5 million; www.equalenergy.ca), is based in Calgary but has an office in Oklahoma City. Equal has producing oil and gas properties that are mainly located in Oklahoma, Alberta, B.C. and Saskatchewan. The company’s production is 52% oil and 48% natural gas. In the three months ended September 30, 2011, Equal’s cash flow was $0.50 a share. That’s up 19.0% from $0.42 a share a year earlier. The gain was mainly the result of higher oil prices and production. During the quarter, the company produced an average of 11,263 barrels of oil equivalent (including natural gas) per day, up 28.3% from 8,777 barrels a year earlier....

In the Canadian stock market, strong sustainable dividend yields are usually associated with financial stocks and utilities, not necessarily with industrial stocks that depend more heavily on the overall health of the economy. Yet today we cover one Canadian industrial stock that raised its dividend payment by almost 10% in September and maintains an attractive yield....

PRECISION DRILLING CORP. $11 (Toronto symbol PD; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Resource sector; Shares outstanding: 276.1 million; Market cap: $3.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.7; No dividends paid since February 2009; TSINetwork Rating: Extra Risk; www.precisiondrilling.com) provides contract-drilling services to land-based oil and gas producers in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

The company continues to see strong demand for its Super Series horizontal-drilling rigs. Horizontal drilling involves drilling development wells sideways or at an angle to reach isolated pockets of oil or gas. Horizontal drilling works well in situations where conventional drilling is either impossible or too expensive.

Precision is now building 49 Super Series rigs, up from its earlier plan to build 30. It will also decommission 49 of its older rigs. Retiring the older rigs will cost Precision between $100 million and $120 million.

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CHEVRON CORP. $100 (New York symbol CVX; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 2.0 billion; Market cap: $200.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 0.8; Dividend yield: 3.2%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.chevron.com) plans to spend $32.7 billion on capital upgrades in 2012. That’s up 25.8% from the $26.0 billion it will probably spend in 2011. About 87% of the 2012 spending will go toward oil and gas exploration and upgrades of existing projects and new developments. For example, Chevron’s new liquefied natural gas plants in Australia will increase its daily production by 13% by 2016. Chevron is a buy.

Inter Pipeline Fund, $18.75, symbol IPL.UN on Toronto (Units outstanding: 264.1 million; Market cap: $5.0 billion; www.interpipelinefund.com), transports, stores, markets and processes oil and natural gas. The fund has three divisions: pipelines transports 35% of Canadian oil sands production and 15% of western Canadian conventional crude oil; extraction processes 40% of Alberta’s exported natural gas into natural gas liquids; and the storage division, which operates under the Simon Storage and TLG banners. In the three months ended September 30, 2011, Inter Pipeline’s revenue rose 30.4%, to $302.1 million from $231.7 million a year earlier. Cash flow per unit jumped 43.3%, to $0.43 from $0.30. That’s mainly because the company’s pipelines shipped 993,300 barrels a day in the quarter, up 24.6% from 797,300 barrels a year earlier. The increased volumes came mostly from a $1.8-billion expansion of the fund’s Corridor pipeline, which was completed in January 2011....