AWE

Once upon a time, I used to own a lot of AWE. It was a very promising stock but a string of failures with persistent drilling resulting in dry holes and missing hydrocarbon saw the share price falling. It has producing oil fields but you need new reserves.

Luckily, I sold most of my holdings in 2007 for between $2.60 to $3 when I wanted cash to invest in other stocks and because I didn't like repeated bad news. It isn't a bad company but the people responsible for drilling need to be replaced. How long can an oil company sustained a long string of dry holes?

I have been tempted to discard all my small remaining AWE shares since it has become a significant loss. Most were bought for around $2 and one parcel was acquired when AWE bought over ARQ. But last Friday, optimism in this stock must be rising... the remaining shares are close to break even so I am glad I didn't discard them.