Three Oil and Gas Trusts for Steady Gains

Article Excerpt

Oil is currently trading at around $71 U.S. a barrel, not far from the record high of $75.35 it reached in April this year. Despite high inventory levels in the U.S., the world’s largest oil consumer, oil prices remain high. That’s largely due to fears of supply disruptions centered around Iran’s nuclear ambitions, violence in Nigeria, and political pressure on foreign companies in Venezuela. Natural gas prices, on the other hand, are now at around $6 U.S. per thousand cubic feet. That’s well down from the record high of $15.71 U.S. reached in December, 2005 in the wake of hurricane Katrina. An unusually mild winter led to lower withdrawals of gas from storage, leaving very high levels of inventory at the end of the heating season. It’s the highest level of inventories in the spring in Canada and the U.S. since 2003. High production levels brought on by continued record drilling activity have also pushed prices down. A number of natural gas…