OIL Futures taking a bath.

[SamAdams]

As I've pointed out before, what's missing is credibility with the large pools of institutional investors.  Yes we have a few, but they can't and haven't moved the stock. MH and team were suppossed to bring credibility and haven't, for all the reasons mentioned above.  Bernstein picking up coverage was impressive, I agree with that.  That's the first.step.  Once and analyst picks up coverage, how that message is brought to fund managers and energy analysts is critically important.  If the analyst is good, like Beverige is, it helps.  But in many cases the insitutional sales guys are the ones to make the calls to the PMs and analysts to back up the research call.  There are many sales guys at a number of sell side shops who view this skeptically still and a bit tainted.  Many haven't done all the work, but when they look at the huge price drop post Total deal they walk away.  That happens more than you would think.  So we could get another 3-4 firms pick up coverage, but unless the guys on the sales desks believe in the story, many PMs and analysts won't hear the story.  That's how things get filtered.  These relationships run deep and many won't jeopardize that for a stock call they view as risky.  I was bit surprised to see HoHos back on the MB as I'm not sure what warrants that.  Stocks go up on positive surprises and we haven't had one of those in awhile.  Simply meeting self imposed deadlines with slightlly positive to neutral news does not make a stock go up.  With out positive news from the exploration program all eyes are on the cert wells and let's hope these execution issues don't leak over into those.