Yet another of the seemingly countless international energy investment opportunities posted results today. While Norwegian Statoil's (NYSE: STO ) results weren't bad, they didn't exactly overly impress anyone, either. And an important question still lingers: Can Statoil build reserves fast and cheaply enough to keep investors happy?
Top-line results will look very familiar if you've followed other big oil names like ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM ) , BP (NYSE: BP ) , and Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-B ) . Revenue was up a nice 31% on the combination of much higher energy price realizations (gas up 53%, oil up 39%), and slightly better production numbers (up 4% on an average barrels per-day basis).
Likewise, profitability was still solid. Net income rose 51% as reported, and the company's production costs still look pretty good.
The big question, though, is how long this can and/or will last. Production guidance has been a bit dicey in the recent past, and while Statoil has the enviable position of being a major supplier of natural gas in Europe, the reserve life is quite low.
To that end, Statoil has been investing a lot of capital into new exploration, acquisition, and production of energy-producing assets. The question could be asked, though, whether the company is spending too much. It hasn't seemed shy about contracting with offshore drillers like Transocean (NYSE: RIG ) at pretty robust dayrates, and many of its acquisitions, like last year's purchase of EnCana's (NYSE: ECA ) Gulf of Mexico assets, have been expensive.
This is all, admittedly, something of a catch-22. If I criticize the company for low reserve life and production growth, obviously I can't criticize it for needing to spend more money acquiring assets and drilling new wells -- and the company has little choice but to pay up at today's rates.
All that said, I think this is one that's best left on the shelf. While there's a slim chance that Russia and Europe will escalate their feud over natural gas to a point at which Russia shuts off the tap (making Statoil's gas possibly even more valuable), that's not enough to get me interested. In addition to a controlling government ownership stake, there's just not much here that makes Statoil stand out as a great alternative. With so many other major oil companies trading at similar, or better, valuations, I think Foolish shoppers can find better deals elsewhere.
Fool contributor Stephen Simpson has no financial interest in any stocks mentioned (that means he's neither long nor short the shares).
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