Hi Ocean my friend,

are you still in Great Britain ? Nice to hear from you,I hope things turned out well for you,remember the old days (wallstreet online)?

Seems you are invested again,are you?

I guess the reason causing the SP increase in January was this Bloomberg release:

Jan. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Exxon Mobil Corp. seeks more than added reserves with its takeover of XTO Energy Inc. The biggest U.S. oil company also intends to prevent a repeat of exploration flops such as a Hungarian well that struck more water than gas.

Last month’s agreement to buy Fort Worth, Texas-based XTO for $30 billion, Exxon’s largest takeover since its 1999 purchase of Mobil Corp., provides growth potential to a company that’s failing on four in 10 exploration wells, analysts say.

Those setbacks culminated in the Nov. 2 abandonment of a $75 million effort to crack open a natural-gas field in Hungary.

XTO knows more than Exxon about tapping petroleum deposits that require unconventional drilling methods, said Gary Adams, a vice chairman at Deloitte LLP in Houston. XTO became the largest U.S. gas producer by exploiting so-called shale and tight-sand deposits while Exxon focused on offshore oil projects, he said.

"Exxon is buying XTO for the people so they can take their knowledge and skill base and put it to work in Hungary as well as Germany and other places," said Brian Youngberg, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co. "For the large, integrated oil companies, unconventional plays were kind of forgotten for a long time, but now it’s one of the few growth areas."

Unconventional deposits include tight sands, or sandstone so dense that traditional drilling won’t unleash the gas, and shale, a type of rock with pores so small that fracturing is required to allow fuel to flow. Exxon’s Hungarian prospect involves tight sands like those at the Freestone Trend in Texas, which accounts for 28 percent of XTO’s output.

Production Gains

XTO more than doubled production in the past four years, largely from unconventional drilling, while Exxon’s output fell 1.2 percent, company filings showed. European oil majors Statoil ASA, Total SA and BP Plc bought into shale-gas joint ventures with XTO rival Chesapeake Energy Corp. in the past two years.

Worldwide, 40 percent of Exxon’s 2007 and 2008 exploration wells were failures, up from 36 percent in the prior two years, company filings showed.

Exxon Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson plans to turn XTO’s headquarters into a new unit to oversee unconventional exploration. Exxon will apply XTO’s "best practices" to projects in Hungary and other countries, Tillerson, 57, told investors on a Dec. 14 conference call.

Exxon’s Hungarian foray began last April, when it paid $25 million to Denver-based Falcon Oil & Gas Ltd. for a 67 percent stake in an area known as the Mako Trough. Exxon agreed to spend $50 million to explore a field estimated by Hungary’s Mol Nyrt., a project partner, to hold 12 trillion cubic feet of gas.

Unseen Aquifer

Geologists and engineers at Irving, Texas-based Exxon failed to detect an underground aquifer on seismic maps of the field, Falcon spokesman Stephen Schultz said. On Oct. 8, Exxon recommended shutting down the project after water began pouring into the Foldeak-1 well, a company filing showed.

After Falcon and Mol urged Exxon to perform an additional perforation of the sandstone, the well gushed more fresh water than gas, prompting Exxon to plug the hole on Nov. 2.
Petroleum deposits typically are mingled with salt water left over from when rocks were formed under prehistoric oceans.

The presence of fresh water indicates the geology is unsuitable for extracting gas or oil, said Manuj Nikhanj, an analyst at Ross Smith Energy Group Ltd. in Calgary.

"It definitely caught Exxon by surprise that they found fresh water at those depths," Nikhanj said. "Unconventional plays haven’t been Exxon’s mandate, and XTO will bring them that expertise."

Hungary Decision

Under the agreement with Falcon, Exxon has until the end of February to decide whether to drill more wells, Schultz said. He said he expects the company to commit to spending another $150 million.

"If they were going to walk away from this, they wouldn’t be buying XTO," Schultz said.

Exxon spokesman Patrick McGinn said drilling results in Hungary were "disappointing." He declined to comment on technical aspects of the project or drilling plans. Alan Jeffers, another Exxon spokesman, said XTO’s know-how was a "very important piece" of the takeover.

The XTO purchase will add about 3,000 employees, ending a decade-long trend of job cuts and attrition that shrank Exxon’s workforce by one-sixth.

"Shale is a much more people-intensive type of development than the majors are designed to do," said Joseph Magner, an analyst at Macquarie Capital USA Inc. in Denver. "It wasn’t what Exxon built itself to be. In order to really add that skill set, XTO was the easiest way to go."

Good luck to all of your investments !

corona