We've already made good money playing publically traded oil and gas companies.
125% on Cheniere... 200% on Halliburton... 210% on Western Refining... 542% on Westport Innovations... 300% on Golar LNG...
And given energy's across-the-board potential, our focus on growth isn't going to change.
In fact, it's about to expand.
Something huge just slipped under the radar.
It was so significant that it promises to change how you think about investing forever - especially in oil and gas.
A late-summer change in the rules now allows for expanded access by retail investors into the lucrative world of venture capital.
It's called direct investment, and it goes far beyond just buying stocks, bonds, and options...
It opens up the potential for all of us to make some serious money. It really is a whole new ballgame.
And for you, it starts this Thursday - perhaps even sooner. (I'll let you know.)
Like I said, this is huge...
A Brave New World for Energy Investors
According to the rule change, accredited investors are now eligible to be directly solicited for investments in a range of deals from real estate to technology startups.
These changes also include giving average individuals the first direct access to oil and gas projects. This rule change has created the opportunity for investors to now be able to buy into the projects themselves.
That's right. It's the chance to buy a share of the income stream created by a real working investment. In some cases, it means the opportunity to buy part of a well or series of wells.
Needless to say, this has suddenly opened up the door to a wide new range of investment opportunities. But be warned, before you jump in you'll need to do some serious homework.
That's why I will soon be releasing a direct investment approach that will dramatically increase your chances of profitability while also reducing your risk.
You see, for the past two years I have been analyzing these types of opportunities, crunching company numbers, reviewing field prospects, and gauging access to infrastructure across North America in anticipation of this opening.
And the truth is that most of the investments that are about to hit your inbox (I have received several already) are just the same old high-risk investments offered in low potential fields. These are the same old pitches that have caused average folks to lose money in oil and gas production over the years. I've seen them all.
In fact, to make this new environment work, companies are going to have to change the way they do business. In the process, there will need to be changes in company practices, identification of prospects, and a more investment-friendly manner of designing operating budgets.
In anticipation of these regulatory changes, what I can tell you is that my work in finding these opportunities for you has been focused on two overriding considerations.
First, the field prospects had to be evaluated and the most promising locations identified. Second, I had to pinpoint the companies that were prepared to provide individual investors with greater protection while also lowering the risk.
That's because losing money on an oil or gas well in the past has largely been the result of several causes, but the main three missteps include wildcat drilling, mature well trusts, and/or the manipulation of pricing and recovery by middle men.
What You Need to Watch Out For
Frankly, these are the reasons why most investors look at oil wells as high-risk propositions.
Wildcat drilling involves "spudding" a hole in a new area in the search for hydrocarbons. Investors fund the project and participate proportionately in the sale of volume realized. Of course, a dry hole means a total loss of the investment. On average, less than 1 in 10 such wells hit enough oil or gas to make the investment profitable.
A mature well oil and gas trust, on the other hand, involves a company packaging wells that have been in production for a while and selling them off. In this case, the flow rates have already declined considerably and the company is often merely creaming low-volume wells off their books by moving them to other owners. Absent investment into expensive secondary and enhanced recovery methods, there is little prospect that the new owners will realize a significant (or often any) return for their money.
But it is the third method that creates the biggest loss for investors...
In this one, a third party acquires control over wells or leased acreage, increases the assessed valuation by hundreds of percent, and sells off the positions with high-pressure glossy pitches and leases up front, earning a nice chunk of change. Meanwhile, the new investors are left holding nothing more than an overpriced asset.
These guys are the ones that really give investment in production projects a bad name.
My 10 Cardinal Rules for Successful Direct Investment
So for the past two years, I've been searching for a better way to allow retail investors to participate in the actual ownership of the stuff coming out of the ground without playing the risk game normally associated with the move.
This has involved getting successful small producers to revise how they work with investors, while also being able to cherry-pick the good projects.
As a result, I only consider companies as suitable investments if they:
1) Have successful production track records;
2) Have transparent, investor-friendly operations;
3) Agree to forego paying themselves any profits on a project until the investors are paid back;
4) Take their return in the same proportion as the investors are realizing theirs;
5) Employ best field practices to reduce operating expenses;
6) Return to the investors any realized savings from such efficiency in direct proportion to the money the investors put up;
7) Run fill-in or other documented drilling projects;
8) Provide the investors a range of opportunities for a return on their investment
9) Offer projects providing rapid paybacks; and
10) Pass through tax breaks to investors.
Many of these rules are self-explanatory, but some of them require explanation.
By fill-in projects, I mean drilling inside acreage that is already producing, remarkably reducing investor risk.
As to rule number 8, "providing investors a range of opportunities to profit" simply means that any usage of the leases - production, flipping with other companies, sale of land, collateralizing the value of volume left in the ground, even acquisition of other assets for the use of what investors initially financed - becomes profit streams for both the company and the investors. To all of this I would also add the evaluation of realizable/recoverable reserves for specified fields, basins, and acreage.
In the end, I've simply connected the companies willing to adopt my 10 cardinal rules with the locations likely to produce sufficient extraction results. That's how I created my "trigger list" of direct investment opportunities.
And yes, there one more factor in determining whether a company made it onto the list. The project in question also needs to provide strong promise of a rapid payback.
The good news is that this approach is working. And I've unveiled exactly how you can participate in what may be the single most important change ever in how you structure energy investments.
I've identified the companies and projects, provide ongoing review and evaluation of the direct oil and gas investment market, and make formal recommendations only for those that meet all of my criteria while providing the quickest and highest return turnaround.
In the meantime, just be sure to ignore all the hype that is headed your way.
Don't invest in any of these offers until you've reviewed my materials. It took two years to put this together, and I can promise you that it's running rings around any other alternative.
About the Author
Dr. Kent Moors is an internationally recognized expert in oil and natural gas policy, risk assessment, and emerging market economic development. He serves as an advisor to many U.S. governors and foreign governments. Kent details his latest global travels in his free Oil & Energy Investor e-letter. He makes specific investment recommendations in his newsletter, the Energy Advantage. For more active investors, he issues shorter-term trades in his Energy Inner Circle.