The Stock to Buy for $200 Oil

Petroleo Brasileiro(PBR) shareholders have earned a 172% return on their investment over the last 52 weeks.

If last week's positive earnings announcement is any indication, this Brazilian oil company has a lot more going for it than just good-looking charts (though the charts look good, too.)

PetroBras Returns Continue to Beat Oil and Brazil Investment Benchmarks

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PetroBras boasts nearly a $300 billion market capitalization (its market cap just passed that of Microsoft(MSFT)).

In fact, it now claims to be the third-largest publicly traded company in the Americas, behind Exxon Mobil(XOM) and General Electric(GE).

With a presence like that, it's clearly a bellwether stock both for the Latin American region and in the oil sector.

PetroBras does a lot: It explores for and produces oil and natural gas. It sells surplus production in Brazil and foreign markets. PetroBras operates oil tankers, distribution pipelines, marine, river and lake terminals, thermal power plants, fertilizer plants and petrochemical units. It is also building new pipelines for ethanol distribution and recently set up a separate operation to manage all its ethanol activities.

Here are three reasons I like PetroBras.

1. The recent oil and gas announcements are real.

In the last six months, PetroBras has discovered three super-giant oil fields in Brazil's offshore Santos Basin. The company also confirmed in January a major natural gas and condensate deposit in the Jupiter area.

If estimates of 33 billion barrels in reserve from another field (Carioca-Sugar Loaf) prove correct, then this ranks as the third-largest oil field in the world after Saudi Arabia's Ghawar (66 billion barrels) and Kuwait's Greater Burgan (46 billion barrels).