Offshore Drillers See Swelling M&A Interest

Now that it's 2007 all over again, and I am playing with oceanic oil drillers again, it's time to brush up on the subject.

[Sep 4, 2007: I'm Buying One Group Today - Deep Sea Oil Drillers]

[Sep 13, 2007: I found Goldman's Other Deep Sea Driller Pick - Atwood Oceanics]

[Oct 11, 2007: Could it Finally be Time for the Deep Sea Drillers?]

Ah those were the days, writing 8 posts a day to an audience of 40 people. ;)

People often ask how do you know about so many stocks / sectors ... frankly, a lot of it is rehash. You do this long enough and you will have touched just about every sector and countless stocks. For example I spent the past 3 weeks reading up on JDS Uniphase (JDSU) and Finisar (FNSR). Folks, these are 1999 stocks; all I had to do was figure out what they were up to the past 11 years. ;) But I digress.

Earnings in this sector have been poor, but as I stated yesterday - if the oil keeps rallying on HAL9000 buying fits, you must acquit. Of course if oil falls back in the days and weeks to come, ignore this entire entry. ;) I much prefer deep sea oil drilling versus shallow bodies of water since the contracts pay the most and last the longest period of time (i.e. stability) - not to mention Petrobras (PBR) has been busy locking up much of the world's supply [May 15, 2008: Petrobras Hoards the World's Deep Sea Oil Drillers] but there is limited selection of public companies in this group; certainly there is no pure play. When I first began the blog, major player GlobalSantaFe was an independent company (which I owned) but was gobbled up by Transocean (RIG), creating the sector's heavyweight ($28.5 Billion market cap).