Noble Energy (NYSE: NBL - option chain) shares have risen this higher morning after the company announced a major natural gas discovery in the Tamar prospect in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel. NBL owns a 36% stake in the well, and company CEO Charles Davidson called the find the largest discovery in the company's history.

If you think that the stock won't fall by too much in the coming months, then now could be a good time to look at a bullish hedged trade on NBL.

NBL opened this morning at $50.44. So far today the stock has hit a low of $47.59 and a high of $50.50. As of 12:15, NBL is trading at $49.77, up 2.98 (6.4%). The chart for NBL looks neutral and S&P gives NBL a 3 STARS (out of 5) hold ranking.

For a bullish hedged play on this stock, I would consider a February bull-put credit spread below the $35 range. A bull-put credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of put options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think, but still leverages nice returns. For this particular trade, we will make a 6.4% return in just four weeks as long as NBL is above $35 at February expiration. Noble would have to fall by more than 29% before we would start to lose money. Learn more about this type of trade here.

NBL hasn't been below $35 in the past year except for two days in October and has shown support around $41 recently.

Brent Archer is an options analyst and writer at Investors Observer.

DISCLOSURE: Mr. Archer owns and/or controls diversified portfolios of long and short stock and option positions that may include holdings in companies he writes about. At publication time, Brent neither owns nor controls positions in NBL.

While other earnings may have disappointed last week, the news was good for oil giant ConocoPhilips (NYSE: COP). In what some took as a good sign for big oil, the Houston-based company reported that third quarter net income surged 41% year over year to $3.39 per share, and that revenue also surged 52% to $70 billion. We'll see whether the good news extends to other petroleum giants scheduled to report quarterly results this week.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial are looking for BP (NYSE: BP) profits to have grown 43.2% in the most recent quarter to $2.34 per share on revenue of $109.7 billion, and Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) to post earnings up 39.4% to $3.25 per share on revenue of $86.8 billion. Marathon Oil Corp. (NYSE: MRO), ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM), and Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) likewise are expected to report higher net income of $2.33 per share (sales of $23.4 billion), $2.40 per share (sales of $131.4 billion), and $2.65 per share, respectively. Even Valero Energy Corp. (NYSE: VLO) is expected to post earnings slightly higher to $1.46 per share (sales of $36.4 billion), despite the effects of Hurricane Ike. Among these companies, only BP and Valero beat earnings expectations in the previous quarter. Not surprisingly, analysts on average recommend buying all except Valero, and shares of all of these companies have recently hit 52-week lows.