WTI $99.46 +56c, Brent $106.92 +47c, Diff $7.46 +44c, NG $4.31 -6c

Oil price

A quick and dirty blog this morning, I am off to the Kentz meeting, will add more later if appropriate otherwise flesh out the bones for tomorrow.

Nothing much happening in oil markets, the weak Chinese data this morning has knocked about 30 cents off the prices across the board.

Kentz Corp

Full year figures from Kentz today and no surprise that they are very good, revenue up 6% at $1.66bn, pre-tax profit up 12.6% at $118m with margins up from 6.7% to 7.1%. The dividend is 10.9c making 17.5c an increase of 21%.

Best numbers are at the order book area where the backlog at the end of February is a stunning $4.1bn which is up 58% since December 2012 and well up on the $3.1bn at the end of December 2013. With a pipeline up 18% at $15.6bn Kentz is clearly firing on all cylinders and the Valerus acquisition looks to be very well timed and already delivering the goods. Ahead of the meeting I won’t stick my neck out too far but with management saying that 2014 will ‘ exceed our expectations and be strongly ahead of 2013’ I suspect pre-tax guidance will be moved upwards by at least 5%.

Petrofac

Petrofac has announced a big contract in Oman this morning, worth in excess of $1bn. The EP contract for Petroleum Development Oman is for the Rahab Harweel Integrated Project and continues the company’s strong position in the country.

And finally… 

The rose-tinted spectacles were swiftly taken off at the Gooners as they were taken to bits by Chelski even though they had a case of mistaken identity in the red card department, how can this still happen in 2014? Lots of goals elsewhere and the title race is still very open you would have thought but its the bottom of the table where the fun is happening as the welsh sides hold up the rest but decent efforts from the likes of the Maccams and the Baggies to  display ineptitude..

We watched the Galactico’s at work in the seven goal thriller that gave Barca the win at Real Madrid but it too was rather spoilt by poor refereeing.

Unsurprisingly England lost the cricket but they were a tad unlucky with the weather but the other sides showed that much fun and games are to be had watching some of these explosive cricketers at work.

As I said maybe more later and I will be writing up my report on Hurricane today and preparing to meet Range Resources tomorrow, a company I have steered clear of for a long time for very good reasons…

And you have to laugh, in todays FT there is a book about the ‘boldness awards’ and Royal Dutch Shell gets a nomination for ‘drivers of change’ along with Bitcoin and Alibaba, want to watch the company you keep BvB…