Many of my articles on Tesla (TSLA) on Seeking Alpha have some commenters that fall into one of these camps:
- Not convinced that Global Warming is occurring
- Not convinced that Global Warming is harmful
- Not convinced that humans are responsible
- Convinced that Electric Vehicles are dirtier than gas vehicles
This article is for all of them and for everyone else who would like to enjoy great dividends from American companies producing local American oil and natural gas. All the companies on this list are reasonably well covered at Seeking Alpha and with this article I hope to help you in finding high dividends from American oil producers.
American Oil Production
It surprises many when presented with the fact that America is the top oil producer in the world in 2013. Here is available data for 2013 from the EIA in Thousand Barrels/day.
The US has also been growing its production steadily.
At the same time imports are falling (graph is in thousand barrels).
America also leads the world in natural gas production. This is where things get interesting for investors. There is an American Oil and Natural Gas boom and there is ample opportunity for great dividends because a lot of the oil and gas production and transport companies are structured as Master Limited Partnerships – MLPs.
Currently many upstream (and to a smaller extent, pipeline) MLPs are trading at below normal values thanks to attacks by an analyst firm called HedgeEye on several large MLPs such as Linn Energy (LINE) and Kinder Morgan (KMP).
Thanks to the ongoing negativity, both those form my two favorite picks. If you are not a fan of K1s at tax time both the companies have alternative options: Kinder Morgan Management (KMR) and Linn Co. (LNCO).
I won’t go into much more detail here because both Linn and Kinder Morgan are heavily covered stocks. But I’ll say this much that in spite of the bad environment, Linn has managed two major acquisitions and a dividend increase is imminent. This has driven the stock back up into the 30’s but there is still room to grow. I believe that any dividend increase will push the stock back up to levels before the Hedgeeye attacks.
Here are the top 5 upstream MLPs in size and their dividends. Linn Energy is almost as big as the rest of them combined so before you invest, note that most of these are small companies.
| Dividend % (As of 1/16) | |
| Linn Energy | 9.5 |
| Breitburn (BBEP) | 9.7 |
| Vanguard (VNR) | 8.3 |
| EV Energy (EVEP) | 9.1 |
| Legacy (LGCY) | 8.4 |
From the list it is easy to see that spectacular dividends are not hard to find from American Oil. Here are the total returns for them in the last 5 years.
Every single one of them outperformed the S&P 500, which had total return 134% measured using SPY (SPY) over the last 5 years.
Conclusion
While my wife and me do a majority of our driving in an EV, are planning on getting solar panels and also invest in green energy companies, I treat our oil and gas investments – great dividends from the American oil and gas boom – as our hedge to green energy.
Disclosure: Long TSLA, KMP, LINE, LNCO, SPY