Today’s buyout of Ryland Oil (RYL-TSX) by Crescent Point Energy (CPG-TSX) is a good example of how large “resource plays” can get valued by investors.  CPG paid $121.8 million, or roughly $0.45/share for Ryland. But back in 2006, when the mania of the emerging Bakken oil play in North Dakota and...
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It’s been a crazy week for gold, oil and the SP500 again…. Since the market top in April we have seen large moves almost EVERY day in the market. I would say this is one of the toughest times for traders as you must be very quick to enter and exit...
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Few investors realize that one sector of the heavy oil market is the most profitable oil in all of North America – it’s called cold flow heavy oil.  Think of it as light heavy oil, thick and gooey enough that it needs a pump to get out of the ground, but...
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A bit of a fun one for Friday. JODI is the Joint Oil Data Initiative. A project run by the International Energy Agency and a consortium of partners, collecting data on oil demand and supply around the world. Every month, JODI polls nearly 100 nations asking about their crude production, imports, stockpiles and...
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Matt Simmons, founder and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Co., talks with Bloomberg's Mark Crumpton and Lori Rothman about BP Plc's leaking oil well....
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Asia is one of the more interesting gas markets in the world. Places like Thailand and its southeast Asian neighbors have seen phenomenal demand growth over the last several years. Total has said they’re in Thailand for gas. (Part of the reason I believe Thai shale gas may become an interesting play...
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AMAZING STRENGTH IN THE “CONTRARIAN’S COMMODITY” In yesterday’s edition, we wrote about the major new low in the CRB Index, a widely followed gauge of commodity prices. The benchmark raw materials index is trading at its lowest levels since July 2009. One of the major “drags” on this index is crude...
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Investors who are looking to the XNG:NYSE Natural Gas Index to tell them the future of  natural gas prices could be making a costly mistake. XNG:NYSE – which tracks large cap companies in the US natural gas industry – has been heading up for 12 months – in the directly opposite direction...
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We’ve spent most of our “ink” over the past three months detailing how the government’s giant “E-Z-Credit” program is pushing up the price of nearly every asset imaginable. This makes life difficult for the contrarian trader, who looks for cheap, beaten-down assets to buy. One of the few ideas we can...
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Scenario planners like Peter Schwartz often talk about “signpost” events. These are happenings, often small in and of themselves, which suggest a larger change rippling through the ether of a business, industry or nation. There have been a number of signpost events in the geothermal sector recently. A few months ago I discussed...
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