Natural gas has become a more attractive fuel because it burns relatively cleanly and can be transported easily in liquefied form. Royal Dutch plans to double its liquefied natural-gas capacity by 2010, according to S&P. That includes a large Russian LNG project to be completed this year. Offsetting this is that, if oil prices don't rise from current levels, profits will fall at Royal Dutch's high-cost Canadian oil sands operations. In January 2004, before Royal Dutch Petroleum and Shell were unified under one U.K. parent company (resulting in a confusing batch of tickers), Shell was forced to remove billions of barrels of "proven" reserves from its books, resulting in huge financial restatements. Criminal investigations yielded nothing, and the whole mess is history, but its legacy endures in investors' skepticism about Royal Dutch's management. That might change a bit after the company's well-regarded chief financial officer, Peter Voser, takes over as CEO this year. Royal Dutch Shell's A shares, which underlie its most active American depositary receipts, carry the lowest multiple among the big oil stocks, even though the company has more than $8 billion in cash and offers a nearly 7% dividend yield.

With oil down sharply since July, big energy producers such as BP (BP) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA, RDSB) could be contrarian dollar plays, Draaisma says. "Oil companies have a lot of things you want, like strong balance sheets and high dividend yields, but they also have some cyclical exposure," he notes.

energy

father in oilfield---everyone needs oil!!

"In that sense stocks like Royal Dutch (RDSA) or Total (TOT) or Chevron or Exxon are true quandaries. We don't know how to value companies that don't have up earnings but have huge earnings and cash streams."

dividend, intl diversification, riding large gains out after having take all my exxon mobil profits recently

partnered with STKL

They are on a climbing trend and they are my choice gas company