Oil and Gas Totals for 2007
Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Fadel Gheit tallied up some key numbers for the oil and gas sector in 2007. He found market capitalization for the group at year-end was $1.617 trillion, led by Exxon Mobil Corp. with $481 billion — close to a third of the group total.
Gheit says group net income dropped to $146 billion from $149 billion in 2006, mostly because of poorer downstream (refining and marketing) results, rising operating costs and higher taxes. Exxon Mobil also led the pack here, with record earnings of $40.6 billion, some 60 percent higher than Shell and twice that of Chevron and BP.
The average stock performance for the group last year was 38.7 percent. Hess did best, up 103.5 percent in 2007. That compares with 3.5 percent for the S&P 500, 57.2 percent for crude oil and 13.3 percent for natural gas, according to Gheit.
