[gt1370a]

Anyone know of an "American" oil company that does not have operations in the Gulf of Mexico, and therefore would not be adversely affected by a bad hurricane season? Obviously all the majors operate there, as well as some smaller ones that would otherwise be appealing like Noble Energy.

I found Berry Petroleum, which seems like a pretty good investment, and Talisman Energy, which has a high P/E.

Also, any insights as to how much one of the majors would be affected by a supply disruption due to a hurricane in the Gulf? Would the price increase dwarf their production loss? At first thought, I would imagine so, since each would lose a relatively small percentage of their production, but the total amount lost could cause a pretty significant price increase.

[CARVER]

It was just on the financial news that Royal Dutch (Shell) was down, because the hurricane 'Dennis' did not do as much damage to them as expected. That is a pretty strange situation, the more your company is being damaged the higher it is being valued. So it seems people think the oil price increase would dwarf the production loss. Since the production loss will be lower than expected, oil and thus oil company stock seems to be going down (...for now that is).

[Eli]

I thought that might happen. If 15% of the gulf operation was down oil could have hit 80 dollars a barrel.

The oil companys would have made a killing and probably more that made up for their loses in a month at those prices.

We haven't even started hurricane season and there is always OBL and co. out there who might throw a monkey in the works.