Just call Murphy Oil (MUR) a classic low-profile play, which is why I'm reiterating my Buy rating for the company, first recommended on April 29, 2009 at a price of $47.80. If you bought MUR in April, you're up about 27%.

Murphy reported Q3 EPS of 98 cents, roughly in-line with the First Call Q3 EPS estimate of 99 cents, and course Wall Street sold the stock, but just view that pull-back as a Buy opportunity. The reason? The argument here is that the refining sector (85% of Murphy's revenue) is just about at its weakest point, with U.S. gasoline demand likely to rebound in 2010 (although demand growth will be lower than during the previous economic expansion, due to higher gasoline/diesel prices). Murphy operates about 1,150 gas stations in the U.S.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), global energy use is going to fall this year. That said, the group also believes that energy use will resume its upward trend, should government policies remain the same.

Looking far ahead, the IEA believes that the world's demand is projected to rise by 40% between now and 2030, when demand is estimated to hit 16.8 billion tons of oil equivalent.

Oil giant Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX) will get its chance to impress Wall Street before the market opens Friday when it reports its third quarter results.

The last time the company reported earnings was back in July when it was unable to meet analyst estimates by posting 87 cents per share verse estimates for 95 cents. Traders seem optimistic that the company will meet expectations this time around and are driving the stock up 2.5% in today's trading.

Oil prices have risen sharply today, despite news that oil inventories rose more than expected last week.

Traders pushed oil up $2.92 a barrel Tuesday to $69.63 even though oil inventories rose by 2.8 million barrels last week verse analyst estimates for a rise of 2.1 million barrels.

Traders are selling oil off today after a government report that showed inventories rose last week.

Going into this week's inventory report from the Energy Information Administration, analysts had been expecting to see oil inventory drop by around 2.25 million barrels. What today's report actually showed though was an increase last week by 2.8 million barrels.

Oil prices dropped a bit today, after a government report showed that inventories unexpectedly rose last week.

According to today's report from the Commerce Department, oil inventories rose by 200,000 barrels last week. Going into today's report analysts had forecast a 1.1 million barrel drop in supplies.

Oil prices are moving strongly higher today following a government report that showed inventories dropped dramatically last week.

Today's report from the Energy Department indicated that oil inventories fell by 8.4 million barrels last week, in stark contrast to the increase of 1.2 million barrels that analysts had been expecting to see for the precious crude.

Oil took a beating tyesterday, as investors sold off the precious crude in the wake of a weak consumer confidence report that renewed pessimism towards economic recovery.

The University of Michigan reported that its consumer confidence index dipped to 63.2, down from 66 in July. This is the second straight month that the index has moved lower, after a four month streak of gains. In June the index was up at 70.8, which was the highest since back in February 2008.

So much for the break for U.S. motorists at the gas pump. Gasoline prices have rebounded about 10 cents in the last week alone, to an average unleaded regular price of $2.54 per gallon, according to data compiled by gasbuddy.com.

U.S. motorists had hoped for a gas price decline of about 30 cents on oil's plunge from $72 per barrel to $57 per barrel earlier this summer. It did not happen. The price of oil didn't remain lower long enough, with gasoline dropping only about 15-20 cents per gallon across the nation, before rebounding in late July.

Oil prices headed lower today following a bearish inventory report from the Energy Information Administration.

Over the past week oil prices have been moving higher, spurred by strong corporate earnings. Better than expected earnings by several big name companies has led investors to anticipate the economy has been improving.

Why did China raise its gasoline and diesel prices? Beijing has a pricing policy that uses a 22-day moving average of crude oil. With the price of crude oil trading at around $71 per barrel, China felt it necessary to raise the price of gasoline and diesel fuel 9% and 10%, respectively. This will raise the price of a gallon of gasoline to $3.00 per gallon, compared with the U.S. price of $2.66 a week ago, according to Reuters news service.

With economies around the world gaining ground this quarter, it follows that demand for crude oil is also increasing. So far we've seen a doubling of oil prices since last February. The main concern is, given the pace of recovery, is there a point where demand for crude oil and gasoline will taper off. If so, we may be looking at an intermediate top in oil prices. However, if world economies continue to improve, crude oil could move to $75 to $80 per barrel.

Earlier this week we were looking at oil prices, and wondering if we would see the precious crude break through the psychological $70 barrier, and that is exactly what we saw today.

For the first time since last November, oil prices were briefly above $70 today, moving up as high as $70.32 before profit taking pushed oil prices down on the day. We finished up the week at $68.44, down 37 cents.

Oil prices are picking up right where they left off on Friday, gaining another $1.72 a barrel, up to $68.03. We noted last week that a big reason oil has been moving so high lately was increased in optimism in the overall American economy.

Two more indicators showed up today that have really got Wall Street betting on continued rising oil costs. The first is a weakening of the dollar, and the second would be signs that manufacturing is strengthening once more in China. Both of these indicators were major reasons why we saw oil spike to record levels last summer, and their emergence now could signal that oil could continue heading higher.

There is still much debate taking place as to whether or America is close to coming out of its current recession, but you would not know it by watching oil prices over the past few months. Today was no exception, with prices moving above $66 barrel as we head into the weekend.

It seems like a long time ago that oil prices were hovering down in the low $30's, but it was not all that long ago... just five months to be exact. As oil has been rising, so have gasoline prices. It is easy to view the current gas prices as "cheap", considering where we were this time last year, but you have probably already noticed a nice jump in what you are paying these days.

Oil prices reached a new 6 month high today, following a weekly inventory report that lead investors to believe that demand is rising for the precious crude.

Going into today's report from the Department of Energy, analysts had been expecting to see a drop of around 1.5 million barrels, but the actual drop came in larger than expected, with a reported 2.1 million decline in inventories for the week ended May 15.