The Top 15 Global Natural Gas Utilities

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Recently I wrote an article on high yielding natural gas stocks. In this post let me list the top 15 natural gas utilities in the world for 2009. This list is based on rankings by the energy consultancy PFC Energy.

 The Top 15 Natural Gas Utilities:

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Some of the utilities shown above are multi-utilities. For example, E.ON of Germany is both a natural gas and electricity utility. E.ON  has operations in many countries including Germany, the UK, US, France, Denmark, etc. Petronas Gas is a division of Petronas oil company of Malaysia. The famous Petronas tower in Kuala Lumpur was built by Petronas as a monument to showcase Malaysia’s growth.

PFC Energy: The World’s Top 50 Energy Companies

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The global energy consultancy PFC Energy has published the top 50 energy companies of the world for 2009 based on market cap. PetroChina (PTR), the integrated National Oil Company (NOC) of China is the highest ranked company with a market cap of $353 B. PetroChina beat last year’s winner of the top spot ExxonMobil(XOM) of the U.S.

Four emerging market firms made it to the top 10 ranking.These four firms are PetroChina & Sinopec of China, Gazprom of Russia and Petrobras of Brazil.

PFC Energry’s Top 50 Energy Companies for 2009:

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Note:
IOC – Integrated Oil Company
E&P – Exploration and Production
R&M – Refining and Marketing

Some of the key takeaways from the PFC Energy report are:

  • The market caps of the 50 largest energy companies rose by 35% to $3.9T from $2.8T a year ago
  • Petrobras and Rosneft more doubled their values from 2008
  • The energy firms from worst hit countries in 2008 outperformed in 2009
  • Russian giants Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil produced a combined 88% value gain
  • Ecopetrol of Colombia is ranked at number 25

Community Bank Stocks with more than 5% Dividend Yields

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Unlike many other countries, there are thousands of small community banks in the U.S. These banks have a smaller foot print when compared to the regional or national banks such as Bank of America(BAC), Fifth Third Bank(FITB), U.S. Bank(USB), etc. However they are usually know their customers better and maintain close relationships with the local small businesses and consumers.

Some community banks operate in just a few counties and have very few branches. For example, United Bancorp Inc Ohio (UBCP) is a state chartered bank and has branches in just a seven country area in Ohio. Accordingly these banks have very low market caps and liquidity can be issue since the total number of outstanding shares is low. UBCP has a market cap of about $45M with 5.2M shares outstanding.

The following table lists 33 small cap community banks with yields of over 5%:

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