Pinedale-exposed companies were top performers the week of Aug. 9 followed by companies with exposure to the Cana (a Woodford shale), while companies with exposure to the Gulf of Mexico Shelf and Piceance were the weakest performers, according to research firm Dahlman Rose & Co.

Also, as the stock market turned more negative, the larger, lower debt names also reached Outperform status, according to vice president Nicholas P. Pope, lead analyst in the Dahlman Rose research note released on Aug. 16.

Following the presumed plugging of the Macondo deepwater well, for the first time in the past four weeks the deepwater and shallow water-focused Gulf operators finally moved out of the top of the performance tables this past week.

Pope says, “While the Macondo well seems to be plugged, the relief wells should help put a couple extra layers of redundancy in place, but likely will not trigger any significantly movement in the stocks.”

Due to a slowing of market headlines—and incoming questions—regarding the Gulf, interest is shifting away from the region for the time being, according to Pope.

“Market negativity seemed to drive outperformance in safer names—low debt and larger market cap,” he says.

Dahlman Rose’s E&P group features 12 upstream companies whose industry actions are covered by the research firm. The group currently consists of Arena Resources Inc. (NYSE: ARD); Cimarex Energy Co. (NYSE: XEC); Concho Resources, Inc. (NYSE: CXO); Denbury Resources Inc. (NYSE: DNR); Energy XXI (Nasdaq: EXXI); Exco Resources Inc. (NYSE: XCO); Mariner Energy Inc. (NYSE: ME); McMoRan Exploration Co. (NYSE: MMR); Petrohawk Energy Corp. (NYSE: HK); Plains Exploration & Production Co. (NYSE: PXP); Range Resources Corp. (NYSE: RRC); Southwestern Energy Co. (NYSE: SWN); Ultra Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: UPL); and XTO Energy Inc. (NYSE: XTO).

The oil group, consisting of companies that are heavily weighted toward oil, outperformed the gas growth group by 150 basis points this past week, while the median performance for the broad E&P group decreased 6.6%

Pope says the oily group decreased 5.1% while the gas growth group decreased 6.5%. The prompt month oil contract delivery, consisting of the September Nymex futures prices, decreased 6.5%, while the prompt month gas contract decreased 3%.

The market seems to have shifted towards simpler metrics of safety this week despite oil names outperforming gas names, according to Pope.

The research firm’s top two quintile of performers had a debt-to-total-cap ratio of 17%, while the bottom two quintiles had a debt-to-total-cap ratio of 30%. Also, the median market cap of the top two performing quintiles was $9.6 billion, while the bottom two performing quintiles had a median market cap of $1.6 billion.

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