The diplomatic war of independence between Iraq and its northern region Kurdistan is escalating rapidly, with the flashpoint for armed conflict being the Kirkuk oilfield on the boundary between the two sides. While both sides have pulled back some of their troops poised for conflict recently, 2014 could be decisive...

Dear OGIB Reader, There are two trends in the Canadian energy patch in the last three weeks that have been making money for investors – but the question is, do they have legs? Can the uptrends continue? The first and most obvious is natural gas. After doubling in price between April...

Last week I described how tax pools are a near-unknown—but increasingly critical—metric for junior oil and gas investors. Tax pools shelter cash flow. E&Ps need them in order to retain cash for expansion—or to keep the coffers fat for paying dividends to investors, the way more and more companies are...

  In Part 1 of my series on tax pools, I explained how the new dividend-paying junior producers will use up their tax shelters by drilling less—crimping cash flow much sooner than expected. In this article, I create a “tax pool universe” to help investors discover: 1. which companies have big tax...

  One question investors should be asking about new dividend-focused E&P companies in the Canadian oil patch is: How will they pay their taxes? Deferring income tax payments is a major part of the business strategy for most junior E&Ps—one that investors don’t realize. Investors have become so used to junior producers (almost) never...

  Natural gas bulls keep pointing to the declining gas rig count in the US as a reason for a near-term turnaround to the upside in prices. The gas rig count in the US has dropped by more than half in the last 18 months, but production continues at record levels—around...

Investing in Condensate, Part I  explained what this hot new commodity is; Part II outlined the bullish case for Canadian condensate demand, and in this third and final article on condensate, I review American efforts to move their glut of condensate north. Condensate is making uneconomic gas wells profitable for producers in the...

When investors ask me about investing in natural gas stocks, I give them the single most important question to ask producers: How much condensate do they produce? Ask about condensate. Condensate is essentially a very light oil which is condensed from rich natural gas and solution gas from oil. And...