Oil & Gas Stock Roundup: Exxon's Liberia Drilling, BP's Egyptian Deal And More

It was a week where both oil and gas prices ended with gains.

On the news front, ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) started drilling a deepwater exploration well offshore of Liberia, while BP plc (LON:BP) (NYSE:BP) has agreed to buy a 10% interest in Egypt's Shorouk concession.

Overall, it was another good week for the sector. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures edged up 0.5% to close at $45.93 per barrel, while natural gas prices rallied 8.5% to $3.085 per million Btu (MMBtu). (See the last ‘Oil & Gas Stock Roundup’ here: Acquisition News from Sunoco Logistics, Tesoro and More .)

Oil prices inched up marginally as traders adopted a "wait and see" attitude ahead of OPEC’s Vienna meeting on Nov 30 with mixed signals on whether the cartel members will agree to rein in output as part of the plan reached in Sep. The commodity was also bolstered by the U.S. Energy Department's weekly inventory release, which showed an unexpected decline in crude stockpiles.

However, to a large extent, the bullish sentiment was offset by data from Baker Hughes showing another rise in the domestic oil rig count and pointing to the resurgence in shale drilling activities.

Meanwhile, natural gas also turned sharply higher following the season’s first withdrawal and forecasts of colder weather that translates into strong demand for the heating fuel.

Recap of the Week’s Most Important Stories

1. World’s largest publicly traded oil company ExxonMobil Corp. recently announced that it has commenced drilling operations on the Mesurado-1 exploration well, offshore Liberia.

Originally, the drilling operations were scheduled for 2014. However, the Ebola outbreak compelled the international oil & gas exploration and development company to defer its drilling plans. Now that the disease has been contained, ExxonMobil declared its intention to continue with its drilling plans off Liberia in October this year.

The well is the first one to be operated by ExxonMobil offshore Liberia and targets oil in Late Cretacous sands. Located about 50 miles offshore Liberia on Block LB-13, the well lies in about 2500 meters of water. The well will also provide calibration for seismic response, which can be used to appraise other leads on the block. (Read more: SeaDrill Q3 Earnings and Revenues Beat Estimates .)

Price Performance

The following table shows the price movement of some the major oil and gas players over the past week and during the last 6 months.

Get The News You Want Read market moving news with a personalized feed of stocks you care about. Get The App Company	Last Week	Last 6 Months
XOM	+0.52%	-2.86%
CVX	+2.35%	+9.41%
COP	+1.17%	+3.90%
OXY	+2.13%	-9.35%
SLB	+0.37%	+6.24%
RIG	+7.37%	+16.45%
VLO	+2.98%	+16.62%
TSO	-0.02%	+8.04%

Over the course of last week, ‘The Energy Select Sector SPDR’ was up 1.99%. Consequently, investors witnessed buying in most market heavyweights. The best performer was rig supplier Transocean Ltd. whose stock price jumped 7.37%.

Longer-term, over the last 6 months, the sector tracker has gained 7.24%. Downstream operator Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE:VLO) was one of the major beneficiaries during this period, experiencing a 16.62% price increase.

What’s Next in the Energy World?

As usual, market participants will be closely tracking the regular weekly releases i.e. the U.S. government data on oil and natural gas. Energy traders will also be focusing on the Baker Hughes data on rig count as well as Wednesday’s OPEC meeting in Vienna.

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