Mixed Bag in Energy Short Selling (BP, VLO, MRO, BHI, RIG, XOM, CVX, COP, SLB, HAL, OIH)

Stock Tickers: BP, VLO, MRO, BHI, RIG, XOM, CVX, COP, SLB, HAL, OIH

The short interest for MAY 2007 is out and the oil and energy patch names is fairly mixed.  The Oil Service HOLDRs (OIH) showed a 13.3% rise in the short interest with the April reading of 16.76 million shares going up to a new 19.0 million shares in May.  As you can see out of the liquid and actively traded US-based (most anyway), the list is actually pretty mixed for the month.  Fighting rising energy prices is just hard to do after a while.

STOCK (Ticker)           MAY07    APR07    Change
BP plc (BP)                   6.61M      6.13M      7.7%
Valero (VLO)                46.05M    10.78M    327%
Marathon Oil (MRO)    5.62M      5.37M       5.6%
Baher Hughes (BHI)   13.44M    12.93M    4.2%
Transocean (RIG)        14.7M      14.64M    1.7%

lower short interest…..

Exxon Mobil (XOM)         46.6M      49.78M    -6.4%
Chevron (CVX)                30.79M    32.43M    -5.1%
ConocoPhillips (COP)  17.37M    18.74M    -7.3%
Schlumberger (SLB)     31.28M    30.07M    -3.8%
Halliburton (HAL)           47.32M    113.7M    -58%   

Jon C. Ogg
May 22, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.