Topic: How To Invest

Hi Pat: Would you be able to provide me with your opinion on Core Laboratories? Thanks.

Article Excerpt

Core Laboratories N.V. (ADR), $108.31, symbol CLB on New York (Shares outstanding: 48.7 million; Market cap: $5.1 billion; www.corelab.com), is a Netherlands-based firm that provides oil-field services. Core has 70 offices in over 50 countries. The company’s services determine and measure the quantity and quality of fluids, such as crude oil and natural gas, in their wells. That helps oil and gas producers around the world increase their production and better manage their reservoirs. Core also analyzes samples of reservoir rocks for their porosity and permeability. That helps determine the reservoir’s size, and the fluids’ ability to flow through the rock. The company’s particular appeal is that it doesn’t directly compete with other companies in the oilfield services industry. Its laboratory analysis of rocks and fluids provides a direct measure of the workings of a given oil and gas reservoir. That’s in contrast to the indirect measurement that traditional oil-field services companies use through logging instrumentation or seismic equipment. Many of the…