How big oil stocks perform in 2011 will be highly dependent on the price of crude oil. That’s not a particularly original thought, but it remains true nonetheless. The price of crude fluctuated from below $65/barrel in May of this year to above $91/barrel in the past week. It’s no coincidence that shares in Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX), and ConocoPhillips Corp. (NYSE: COP) posted new 52-week highs earlier this week. Royal Dutch Shell plc (NYSE: RDS-A) posted a 52-week high in early November, and BP plc (NYSE: BP) has still not recovered from the Gulf Oil spill although shares have jumped more than 60% since BP’s 52-week low in June.

We noted yesterday that the big oil companies are expected to spend more than $100 billion in exploration and production activities in 2011. The big jump reflects the companies’ expectations that prices will stay high, certainly above $80/barrel for 2011.

Here’s a short table showing the tickers, the current price, the mean target price from Thomson Reuters, the implied upside to that target, and the 52-week trading range.  We’ll add some color after the chart.

Stock	Current	Mean Target	Implied Gain	52-week Range
XOM	$73.37	$74.77	0.019	55.94 – 73.69
CVX	$91.37	$94.88	0.038	66.83 – 92.39
COP	$67.93	$64.35	-0.05	46.63 – 68.30
RDS-A	$66.45	$73.00	0.099	49.16 – 68.55
BP	$43.95	$46.66	0.061	26.75 – 62.38