Topic: How To Invest

Q: Pat, what’s your advice on STEP Energy Services? It seems to have business on both sides of the border, which I would have thought would help it in the current oil and gas market.

Article Excerpt

A: STEP Energy Services, $2.68, symbol STEP on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 66.5 million; Market cap: $184.9 million; www.stepenergyservices.com), is an oilfield service company, founded in 2011, that provides coiled tubing (very long metal pipe spooled on a large reel), and other products and services for fracking. Oil and gas drillers use horizontal wells to carry out fracturing, or “fracking,” on so-called “tight” gas and oil formations. Most of that drilling occurs in sand, coal and shale. These mineral deposits are too dense, or tight, to let the gas or oil they contain flow freely into the well. Fracking cracks the formation and releases the gas and oil. The company’s Canadian services are focused in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, while in the U.S., it focuses on the Permian and Eagle Ford shale areas of Texas and the Haynesville area of Louisiana. In Canada, STEP provides a range of well services, but mainly coiled tubing services for completing new wells or improving already-producing wells…