Greentech Media submits:

by Eric Wesoff

First Solar (FSLR) is on the minds of most everyone in the solar industry.

Vinod Khosla speaks of First Solar’s performance in his recent piece in GTM. The CEO of CIGS PV vendor MiaSolé, Joseph Laia, has a First Solar panel in a nearby office as a bit of competitive inspiration. The CEO of Abound Solar, Tom Tiller and Solexant’s CEO, Damoder Reddy, (both working with CdTe) also have First Solar in mind as a target. Even stealthy firms like Alta Devices have to keep abreast of where First Solar is headed.

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Graham and Dodd Investor submits:

Forty some years ago, American Express (AXP) went through a "BP" (BP) experience, and not surprisingly, Warren Buffett turned out to be a big winner.

AmEx, unfortunately, had a warehousing operation that was basically unrelated to its main business. Unless you consider that "warehousing" was a form of verification, just as paying off travelers checks.

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Tom Konrad (AltEnergyStocks) submits:

I recently wrote how Smart Transport stocks may benefit from declining supply and increasing demand for oil. I call the application of information technology [IT] to transportation "Smart Transportation." Smart Transportation improves the function of the market for transportation services, just as the Smart Grid improves the market for electricity: by giving market participants better information and making the price of transportation better reflect the costs. Because reducing congestion also reduces fuel use at very little cost, Smart Transport stocks should benefit from peak oil.

Types of Smart Transport

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Bill Francis submits:

When I first really started following natural gas prices I would always hear people talking about rig count and how much it would affect the production of natural gas. It made common sense to think that the more rigs that are out there the more wells will be drilled and therefore the more gas comes online. This was the conventional thinking when I was positive that gas withdrawals would fall off before the heating season of ‘09 and ’10. This however was not the case and the drop in rig count didn’t really play that big of factor into a significant production decline that was supposedly going to follow the decline in rigs.

From going over the numbers I believe it has come clear that throughout the history of the liberalized US natural gas market (’91, more or less, to present) the rig count has not dictated the amount of production that will flow into the market. As you can see below, it is the price of natural gas that actually looks to be the indicator of rig count and not rig count being a leading indicator of production. I’ll take this a step further and argue that the more rigs that are out there, the higher the price and the more marginal the wells that are coming online will be.

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

eChristian Investing submits:

Dividend investors have been dumping their BP stock for weeks now, given concerns that the dividend would be axed. Yesterday, BP (BP) officially suspended their dividend, confirming investor fears. Now ex-BP investors are looking for quality stocks to replace their lost dividend yields.

Of course investors aren’t expecting to find stocks offering a 10.5% dividend yield like BP had until yesterday, but replacing BP’s dividend yield is not an easy task either. Consider BP stock before the Gulf rig explosion on April 20:

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

George Fisher submits:

I love America and American ingenuity. Business ingenuity is found nurturing in smaller US companies where the stakes for failure can be the kiss of death, where liability risk can cripple if mistakes are made, and where if successful the rewards are bountiful. ATP Oil and Gas (ATPG) is putting American ingenuity to work in its new Titan offshore platform to create a safer work environment, and was doing so long before BP’s (BP) horrific series of missteps in the GOM.

Not all oil and gas drilling projects are designed like BP’s MC252 well and Transocean’s (RIG) Deepwater Horizon. In these days of heightened analysis, and with the importance of ATPG’s newest deepwater GOM infrastructure asset to its survival, it would be prudent to investigate some of its features. The goal was to determine if this critical asset may stand up to additional regulatory scrutiny.

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Zman submits:

Oasis Petroluem (OAS) IPO Quick Look

• IPO raised 5 mm for the company
  • Shares out after deal 92.2 mm,
  • Market cap = .36 B
  • Total Enterprise Value = .022 B
    • Balance sheet:
      • No debt
      • Cash 9.6 mm (or .68 per share)
• Pure Play Williston Basin Bakken player – North Dakota and Montana.
  
  • 292,000 net acres
  • 1Q production: 3,295 BOEpd (91% oil)
    • 1,084 BOEpd Sanish (EOG and WLL country)
      
    • 1,037 BOEpd East of Neeson Anticline
      
    • 1,078 West of Neeson (drilling in and around BEXP’s Rough Rider)
    • The remaining volumes are non-core, non Williston.
  • Reserves: 13.3 MMBOE. Acreage is largely unproven by OAS but in territory highly proven by offset operators.

• The 2010 Plan: Spend 0 mm in 2010 drilling 30 net wells in the Bakken with a 4 rig program. Note in the model that follows that I’ve factored in some fairly conservative assumptions on the incremental production this could lead to but this is very preliminary on my part. Chances are better than not that this forecast is overly conservative and will be lifted as we get more insight into their well results. Note that OAS is drilling two wells at present in the hear of BEXP’s Rough Rider area, in close proximity to BEPX wells that IP’d between 2,000 and 3,600 BOEpd and have demonstrated solid 30 and 60 day average rates. By contrast, I am modeling average IPs of 1,200 BOEpd and somewhat sharper decline rates than offset operators seem to be experiencing in this part of the play. Obviously there is no guarantee’s completions will be on this level but at least they are drilling in the right neighborhood.

This a brief, first take model and it will be updated as more data becomes available in the near future…

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Debra Fiakas, CFA submits:

The Department of Energy has the solution for the nation’s corn-ethanol hangover and it is not the “hair off the dogs back.” In December 2009, the DOE awarded .0 million to ICM, Inc. (private) to modify an existing corn-ethanol facility to cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass or energy sorghum. Kansas-based ICM is matching the grant with .3 million of its own cash.

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Double Dividend Stocks submits:

In our previous article, “The Top 5 U.S. Dividend Paying Stocks for 2010”, we identified the five U.S. dividend stocks which are projected to make the largest cash dividend payouts to shareholders in 2010. This elite group included 2 Energy stocks, 2 Healthcare stocks, and a Telecom stock.

The top 5 foreign dividend paying stocks that we’ve identified include a Spanish bank, a Chinese telecom, and 3 energy companies, from the U.K., Holland, and France. It turns out that 2 of these foreign Energy stocks are actually projected to pay out more cash dividends than any of the U.S. stocks. All 5 of these foreign dividend stocks trade in the U.S. on the NYSE.

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha

Karl Smith submits:

By Karl Smith

As a strong proponent of the GM bailout, I feel obliged to answer Ozimek’s challenge.

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Energy Sector and Stocks Analysis from Seeking Alpha