Oil Prices to Remain Inflated but Do not Pass on Gas

Ranked #3 on Forbes' Best Brokerage Analysts for 2009, Oppenheimer Senior Analyst Fadel Gheit sat down with The Energy Report to shed light on existing conditions in the oil and gas sector. In terms of oil prices, "financial players are more in control now than oil companies or OPEC," according to Fadel, who is currently more bullish on gas than on oil. "Despite the fact that gas stocks gained significantly this year," he says, "we think the upside potential remains great."

The Energy Report: Why is there such a high ratio and differential between natural gas and oil right now?

Fadel Gheit: Because oil is a global commodity; gas is a regional commodity. You can have a huge discrepancy in gas prices from country to country, from continent to continent, because of a lack of adequate transportation— the means of shipping to take gas from where it's found in abundance to where it's needed. For example, gas in the Middle East has no value because there is no local market for it. Most of the oil-producing countries actually flare gas because, basically, they use gas, you call it, as a drive. They use gas to pump it back in the oil field instead of water, because they don't have water, so they use natural gas that comes as a co-product with oil to pump it back into the wells to push oil because that's what they want. They want oil; they don't want gas.
Read Article >>>