Big Find Sends Statoil Shares Soaring (STO, E, HES, TOT, XOM, CVX, COP)

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Shares of Statoil ASA (STO), Norway’s largest oil company are surging 3% after the company announced what may be Norway’s most significant oil discovery in over a decade, saying it found oil and natural gas at the Skugard prospect in the Barents Sea. The combination of the Statoil news and higher oil prices, helped by the March jobs report and a weaker U.S. dollar, are boosting the Oil and Gas Explorer Stocks Index to a gain of 0.7%.

The Skugard discovery may hold up to 250 million barrels of recoverable reserves, Statoil said, giving it the potential to surpass a discovery made by ENI SpA (E) in Norway in 2000. Eni, Italy’s largest oil company, is one of Statoil’s partners on the Skugard project. Shares of the Italian company are up 2% today.

The two companies had previously drilled two dry wells in the Barents Sea in recent months, according to Bloomberg News. Statoil, which is majority-owned by Norway’s government, has been struggling to find new oil deposits at home and has been looking to regions such as the Canadian oil sands to bolster output.

Shares of New York-based Hess (HES) and France’s Total SA (TOT), Europe’s third-largest oil company, are up 2% and 1%, respectively, as the companies are also partners with Statoil and could benefit from increased natural gas production that could lead to another liquefied natural gas plant being built at Melkoeya, Bloomberg reported.

Among the U.S. oil majors, ExxonMobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX), the two largest U.S. oil companies, are up 1%, while ConocoPhillips (COP), the third-largest U.S. oil company, is flat.

Investors can track the Oil and Gas Explorer Stocks Index for performance trends and a suite of other metrics at tickerspy.com.

Tags: COP, CVX, E, HES, STO, TOT, XOM