Posts for Ticker ‘PXP’

Soros Fund Holdings

Yesterday Soros Fund Management Filed a 13-F outlining the fund’s long portfolio as of September 30th, 2009.  The total value of the holdings reported in the filing is $6,198,089.  Twenty holdings represented roughly 50% of the value.  Soros Fund Management is a hedge fund management company that invests primarily based on macroeconomic analysis.  It should be noted that the fund’s equity portfolio likely contains significant short positions, which are not reported in 13-F filings.  Some of the positions in the filing may be in place as hedges or part of a multi-part trade, rather than a directional bet.  With that in mind, a glance at this firm’s major holdings provides clues to its macroeconomic outlook.  

Total stakes in Petroleo Brasileo Brasileiro (NYSE: PBR) represent 9.23% of the value of the positions reported in the filing, with just over 13 million shares held.  This is down from by 2.3 million from the fund’s last filing. Read More »

Posted on: November 17, 2009 – 10:52 am in Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oil & Energy Upgrades & Downgrades (APA, DNR, E, XOM, OXY, PXP, RDS.A, SPWRA)

oil-well-image4These are the top analyst calls we have seen in the oil patch and in the energy sector this Monday morning:

  • Apache (NYSE: APA) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse.
  • Denbury Resources Inc. (NYSE: DNR) Cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse.
  • ENI S.p.A. (NYSE: E) Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan.
  • Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) Started as Buy at Citigroup.
  • Occidental Petroleum (NYSE: OXY) Cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse.
  • Plains Exploration (NYSE: PXP) Cut to Neutral at Credit Suisse.
  • Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) Cut to Market Perform at Sanford Bernstein.
  • SunPower (NASDAQ: SPWRA) Cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley.

JON C. OGG

Posted on: March 16, 2009 – 7:20 am in Alternative Energy, Analyst Calls, Oil & Gas, , , , , , , ,

What If Chesapeake Production Cuts Work? (CHK, PXP, BP)

Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE: CHK) is tired of not having profitable results from a key operation.  The largest natural gas player announced that it will cut its production by 7% and is considering a further reduction of 10% in drilling for 2009. Natural gas prices of about $2.70/thousand cubic feet get the blame. According to the company’s CEO, that’s a price at which most natural gas production is unprofitable.
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Posted on: March 2, 2009 – 10:26 am in Oil & Gas, , ,

Chesapeake Wants To Print Money (CHK, BP, STO, PXP)

Chesapeake_logoChesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE:CHK) filed three documents with the SEC on Friday. One replaces a shelf registration that expires on December 5, the second authorizes the issuance of up to 50 million shares of Chesapeake stock "in connection with the acquisition of assets, businesses or securities of other companies," and the third extends an agreement with three of its sales agents to sell up to $1 billion in shares in 2009 and beyond. Chesapeake shares dived more than 15% on the news.  The first and third of these filings are pretty normal. The second,however, leaps off the page.

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Posted on: December 1, 2008 – 10:06 am in Oil & Gas, Secondary Offering, , , ,

Chesapeake Energy: Still Raising Cash (BP, CHK, STO, PXP)

Chesapeake_logoIf BP plc (NYSE:BP) plans to buy Chesapeake Energy (NYSE:CHK) as the rumor mill has suggested, it had better hurry up while there’s still something left. Early this morning, Chesapeake announced that it had sold a 32.5% interest in its Appalachian Marcellus Shale assets to StatoilHydro (NYSE:STO), Norway’s state oil company. Chesapeake banked $3.375 billion in exchange for about 600,000 net acres.

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Posted on: November 11, 2008 – 9:50 am in Oil & Gas, , , ,

Drilling for Cash, Not Oil and Gas (PXP, OXY, CHK)

Oil_well_logo_2This morning Plains Exploration (NYSE:PXP) announced the sale of its oil and gas properties in the Permian and Piceance Basins for $1.25 billion to Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY). This sale highlights two of the main difficulties facing mid- and small-cap energy firms.

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Posted on: September 25, 2008 – 9:26 am in Oil & Gas, , ,

Chesapeake Drilling for Cash? (CHK, BP, PXP)

Tx00338coilwellgusherodessatexasp_2Chesapeake Energy (CHK) announced today that it will create a joint venture with the US division of BP plc (BP) that will give BP a 25% stake in Chesapeake’s Fayetteville Shale assets in exchange for $1.9 billion. Following the transaction, BP will own about 135,000 net acres of Chesapeake’s current 540,000 net acre leasehold.

As part of the deal, BP pays $1.1 billion up front, in cash, at closing, and the remaining $800 million by funding drilling and completion expenses through the rest of 2008 and into 2009, until the money runs out. But that’s not the best part for BP. If Chesapeake acquires any future leaseholds in the Fayetteville Shale play, "BP will have the right to a 25% participation in any such additional leasehold."

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Posted on: September 2, 2008 – 12:55 pm in Oil & Gas, , ,

Oil & Gas Hedges Galore (APL, TSO, PXP)

It looks like Joe Public isn’t the only one who thought oil and gas prices were through the roof.  It seems that some of the big boys started locking-in prices that seemed extremely high.  This is called hedging or collaring, but we have seen fresh announcements from teh likes of Atlas Pipeline Partners LP (NYSE:APL), Tesoro (NYSE:TSO), and Plains Exploration and Production (NYSE:PXP).

Atlas Pipeline Partners LP (NYSE:APL) announced yesterday that it would discontinue its current hedging strategy in favor of returning to a strategy it had followed until June 2007. The company had hedged about 86% of its natural gas liquids production using crude oil derivative contracts. Because crude oil prices are skyrocketing, the hedges have become "less effective." The terminated contracts run through the next six quarters. Atlas raised its guidance from $1.90-$2.00 per common unit to $2.00-$2.20. That’s the good news.

The not-so-good news is that Atlas will take a charge against earnings of about $10 million for the second quarter, with a total dollar loss on the derivative contracts of approximately $250 million. The stock price is up less than 0.1% in early trading.

Tesoro (NYSE:TSO), an independent refiner/marketer, has also closed its crude oil derivative positions and expects a charge against earnings this quarter of $125 million. The company also lowered guidance by $0.30-$0.50, blaming the change on high energy costs. The refining business is not getting any easier.

Finally today, Plains Exploration and Production (NYSE:PXP) announced that it had acquired crude oil puts on 40,000 b/d of production for 2009 and 2010. The average deferred premium plus interest on the 2009 contracts is $6.19 per barrel and the strike price is $106.16 per barrel. The 2010 contracts carry a strike price of $111.49 per barrel, and an averaged deferred premium plus interest of $12.08 per barrel. Plains also acquired $10-$20 collars on 150 million cubic feet of natural gas production for 2008 and 2009. The company plans to use marked-to-market accounting for these hedges.

There are a couple of morals to these stories. First, try not to be a refining/marketing company. That one’s pretty obvious. Second, crude oil derivative contracts are not effective hedges in the current market. Their cost is too high and the continuously rising cost of crude almost guarantees that the hedge will be ineffective. Expect more of this kind of news from almost every oil and gas company that hedges physical barrels.

Paul Ausick
June 17, 2008

Posted on: June 17, 2008 – 9:59 am in Oil & Gas, , ,