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Later, 4:46 p.m. Central Time: it appears WTI closed at about $101.08. 

Later, 1:05 p.m. Central Time: WTI-Brent spread at $5.39. WTI up $1.04, to $101.33; Brent up only 62 cents to $106.77. 

Later, 11:05 a.m. Central Time: trading at new highs -- BHI, CRR, ECA, EOG, EPD, ERF, HAL, HES, HP, MDU, PSX, SLB, SRE, WLL. 

Later, 10:46 a.m. Central Time: that's a surprise -- oil is up over a full percent, and the market has now turned negative. I would not have expected that. Everyone was so happy with the "Goldilocks" employment numbers and the hourly wage numbers that I thought the market would have stayed green throughout the day (it's now down about 25 points); and I never expected oil to be back up at $101 today, after it started turning down earlier this week. Something geo-political going on, Crimean, Ukraine, North Korea, California? An Obama speech would have resulted in both the market and oil going down. What's natural gas doing? Down almost a percent; that's unexpected also.

Speaking of "Goldilocks," when Corporate America looks back on 2014, they might realize this was the "Goldilocks" era (I'm thinking of COP's announcement of a $6 billion ethane cracker project in Texas):

• "we're" well past all that talk of a double dip recession; the economy should keep improving
• energy costs / access to energy in the US should remain a huge bargain vis a vis global energy 
• an incredibly well-trained underemployed work force in the US with little wage pressure
• wars for the US winding down
• Putin's cat-bird seat looks more and more like a house of cards
• ObamaCare (one-sixth of the economy) baked into CFO's projections
• really low-cost credit
• credit markets loosening up
• mid-term elections; gridlock in Washington; lame-duck presidency  
• trickle-down wealth effect 

Original Post
 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on anything you read here or anything you think you might have read.

Oil is up about 3/4ths of one percent.

EOG is up $1.00 in pre-market trading. KOG is up 31 cents; one doesn't often see KOG in pre-market tradking. T is up 13 cents. HAL is down 38 cents.

Merrill Lynch initiated coverage on KOG: a BUY rating with a price objective of $16.

A reader once told me -- maybe two years ago -- that once "Wall Street" discovers the Bakken, investment in the Bakken will take off. I don't know about you, but with this BUY recommendation on a small Bakken operator like KOG is made by Merrill Lynch, I would argue that "Wall Street" has discovered the Bakken.

UBS discovered Newfield the other day, I believe. I'm starting to forget.

I said KOG was a "small" Bakken operator. I track the Bakken operators here.

This might be a good day to note the market capitalization and debt of some names in the Bakken and other shale plays I follow (data from Yahoo!Finance, this date; many figures rounded, arbitrarily):

• EOG: $55 billion; $6 billion
• KOG: $3.4 billion; $2.3 billion
• WLL: $8.8 billion; $2.7 billion
• CLR: $24 billion; $4.7 billion
• OAS: $4.4 billion; $2.5 billion
• NOG: $0.9 billion; $0.6 billion
• TPLM: $0.7 billion; $0.3 billion
• AMZG: $0.2 billion; $0.07 billion
• HK: $1.8 billion; $3 billion
• MDU: $7 billion; $2 billion
• SD: $3 billion; $3 billion

By the way, three of those data points surprised me (negatively); two of those surprised me (positively).

Disclaimer: I often make typographical errors; these were not double-checked as much as they should have been. I could have occasionally transposed market cap and enterprise value (though I think I did not). These are for my use only; look at them at your own risk; go to the source for "the truth."