Oil and Energy Stocks and ETFs

By comparing the movement of the general commodities basket and gold to the moves of oil and the products, you can get an idea how much of the move is general inflation vs $US changes vs demand / supply issues. Note, too , that the products usually go up immediately on oil price rises, but tend to drop only slowly (if at all) on oil price declines… SPY is there to remind you that you need to outperform the S&P 500 basket or it is not worth the added risk here. Finally, if the SPY is rising, oil demand usually does as well. When the SPY falls, oil can take a large decline (as production is geared up for a full running economy, and that supply surge takes time to throttle back on an economic slowdown).

When the ‘spread’ between the products and crude oil is wide, refiners do well, when it narrows, the integrated oil majors do better than the straight refiners.

Oil And Fuels Commodities

USO Oil, KOL coal, UNG Nat Gas, UGA Gasoline, UHN Heating Oil, with a Golden ruler

USO  -  US Oil - treasuries ETF with oil futures 
GLD  -  Gold ETF that often moves when oil moves
SPY  -  S&P 500 Benchmark ETF
DBC  -  Dunn and Bradstreet Commodities basket ETF
KOL  -  Coal ETF (has miners and equipment makers)
UNG  -  US Natural Gas- treasuries ETF with natural gas futures
UGA  -  US Gasoline- treasuries ETF with gasoline futures
UHN  -  US Heating Oil (tied to Diesel and Jet Fuel in production)
        - treasuries ETF with heating oil futures
NLR  -  Nuclear Industry ETF
CA:U -  Uranium, traded in Canada.  U.TO in Yahoo!

5 year, weekly
6 months,
10 day

The two nuclear tickers are on here so you can see some of the competition. The holdings of CA:U (that is called out via the ticker U.TO in finance.yahoo) are substantially all Uranium Oxide.

Uranium Participation Corporation operates as an investment holding company. The company invests its assets substantially in uranium oxide in concentrates (U3O8). U3O8 is primarily used as a fuel for nuclear power plants. Denison Mines, Inc. operates as the manager of the company. Uranium Participation was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

So if you want to buy some Uranium, you can. You just can’t take possession of it ;-) There is a nuclear stocks section at the bottom of this posting, but for now the industry is in a Fukushima Funk… (You can also buy shares in uranium enrichment companies, but you can’t get samples of the output ;-) “Own, but don’t touch” seems to be the idea.

What About Oil Companies?

Not oil per se, but the companies that produce and process it.

Some Selected Global Oils:

The Oil Majors Race

XOM  Exxon Mobil - Largest, U.S. / Global
COP  Conoco Philips - U.S.  with Russian exposure
CVX  Chevron Texaco - U.S.
PBR  Petrobras - Brazil
PCZ  Petro Canada HAS NOW MERGED WITH SU SUNCOR
SU   Suncor - Canadian Oil Sands
BP   British Petroleum
TOT  Total - France
E    Eni Italy
IMO  Imperial Oil - Canada Oil and Oil Sands
SSL  Sasol - South African Synthetic Oil Company

Some added oils and refiners:

Oil and Refining companies vs Gold and SPY

Notice that due to ARSD being on a rocket ride / bubbly, the graphs of the other tickers look compressed. The refiners on this graph are actually wider ranging that the oils on the prior graph. Use the scales at the side wisely…

STO  -  Norway, Statoil
GLD  -  Gold ETF
SPY  -  S&P 500 benchmark ETF
VLO  -  Valero oil refiner and retailer
TSO  -  Tesoro oil refiner
MRO  -  Marathon oil refiner
ARSD -  Arabian American Development Company (chemicals and oil refining)
RDSA -  Royal Dutch Shell Oil A shares
RDSB -  Royal Dutch Shell Oil B shares

Some Oil Related Comparisions

Oil service companies are the folks who provide ocean drilling rigs, pipes, fly crew out to rigs, so seismic studies. All the various support work that goes into making a well produce.

Oil Services Companies

XES  -  Oil Services ETF (more user friendly than OIH) 
OIH  -  Oil Services ETF (that sometimes limits what size you can buy)
SPY  -  S&P 500 Benchmark ETF
USO  -  Oil ETF (higher prices drive more services)
RIG  -  Transocean deep sea driller
SLB  -  Schlumberger - the data processing and seismic expert
KEG  -  Key Energy Services
FTK  -  Flotek - chemicals, valves and such
PKD  -  Parker Drilling
HERO -  Hercules Offshore

I’ve put “momentum” and “slow stochastic” indicators on this chart as ‘swing trading’ the ripples in Oil Services is often an easy trade. There is a monthly oil industry report that tends to induce periodic fear / greed cycling…

Synthetic oils, tar sands, and algae oils companies, a speculative group.

While tar sands are becoming more mainstream, they still have higher costs to produce than regular oil fields, so have more price volatility (the profit percentage cycles wider on any price swings in oil). The synthetic oil stocks are clearly highly speculative and some of them are nothing other than penny stock toys. (I’m interested in watching the technology, but as an investment it is a ‘sucky’ place to put money).

Synthetic Fuels and Tar Sands vs SPY

1 year,
6 months

SYNM -  Syntroleum
USO  -  U.S. Oil - futures contract fund 
SPY  -  S&P 500 Benchmark ETF
RTK  -  Rentech 
SYMX -  Synthesis Energy Company
PSUD -  PetroSun Energy - penny stock in oil services and Algae
OOIL -  Origin Oil - Algae based oil system
SSL  -  SASOL - South African Synthetic Oil Company
SU   -  Suncor - Canadian Tar Sands
IMO  -  Imperial Oil - Canadian Tar Sands

Canadian vs US Coal Majors.

Coal will be with use for several hundred years. It makes up over 1/2 of US electricity supply and is essential in many materials manufacturing steps, like making iron and steel.

Canadian and US Coal

I suspect we are seeing a coal gas artifact in PVG and how it is moving divergent from the others. A “Dig Here”…

1 year,
6 months

ACI   Arch Coal
ANR   Alpha Natural Resources
BTU   Peabody Coal (Very Very big!)
CNX   Consol Energy
TCK   Teck Resources ( merged FCL ) 
MEE   Massey Energy  VA
PCX   Patriot Coal  MO
PVG   Penn Virgina GP Holdings  PA
PVR   Penn VA Resources Partners  PA plus gas

Small U.S. Based Coal

These are smaller coal mines compared to the major global producer, BTU.

Minor coal miners compared to BTU benchmark

6 months without EEE compared to BTU

Small US Coal producers. (EEE has some kind of partnership in a carbon offset trading scheme, but no earnings. My take is that coal is flat in the U.S.A. but Quatloo Betting on Carbon Cap and Tirade is a hot area ;-)

ARLP  Alliance Resource Partners LP  (OK coal)
EEE   Evergreen Energy  (Old KFx coal upgrading)
ICO   International Coal Group  WV.
JRCC  James River Coal  VA
KOL   Coal ETF
NCOC  National Coal  TN
NRP   Natrual Resources partners  TX
WLB   Westmoreland Coal  CO plus generation
WLBPR Westmoreland Coal Preferred
WLT   Walter Industries  FL met coal + mortgages + coke + gas + fibers +...

China Coal compared to BTU – Peabody Coal in the USA

Chinese Coal Companys vs BTU Benchmark

1 year,
6 months

CCOZF  China Coal Energy  penny stock
CHGY   China Energy   *
PUDA   Puda Coal      metallurgical coal
YZC    Yanzhou Coal  *

(These two look to have evaporated or changed tickers)
SCLXD  Sino Clean Energy
SGZH   Songzai Intl Hldg  *

* larger companies

Uranium and Thorium miners & refiners

Not a lot of interest now, but someday…

Uranium miners and refiners

1 year,
6 months,
10 day

NLR  - Nuclear Energy ETF (basket of stocks, CCJ, USU, EXC, CEG, etc.)
CCJ  - Cameco - Canadian.  Major Uranium miner and fabricator
URRE - Uranium Resources.  Miner in Texas
CA:U -  Uranium, traded in Canada.  U.TO in Yahoo!
URZ  - Uranerz.  Exploration stage miner.  Wyoming
DNN  - Dennison Mines.  Ontario, Canada.  Mixed metals, diamonds, U.
USU  - USEC Inc.  Major refiner - centrifuge operator in USA.
LTBR - Lightbridge.  Thorium Fuel Cycle provider.  Was:
      THPW  Thorium Power - start up scale novel fuel cycle - penny stock
URG  - UR-Energy, Inc.  Miner in Colorado
UEC  - Uranium Energy Corp.  Exploration stage miner in Austin, Texas

Subscribe to feed

About these ads