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Some companies just make success look easy. Take the sterling example of Royale Energy, which is up 382% since the start of 2008 and hit yet another all-time high in Tuesday trading after the company detailed its plans to drill a new natural gas well in Utah’s Uinta Basin. Late Monday, the company disclosed an application to drill its V Canyon 20-2 well, located near its 20-1 and 20 wells, and while both of those proved successful, this one looks to leave them behind in the dust. The company said initial tests showed “significant” sand quality in the area, suggesting a high flow rate that exceeds the levels in the other wells.

V Canyon 20-2 is “a low-risk well to drill, with a significant upside potential in terms of both long life production and total reserves of natural gas,” Royale said. Another location could produce both gas and oil. Stephen Hosmer, Royale’s executive vice president, said the new drillings were its first step to upping its percentage of oil reserves to its base, though he didn’t say how much.

Chanda Idano, Royale’s director of marketing and public relations, declined to comment on the potential returns from the well. Idano noted that the company had already drilled four wells in the area that were still in the process of being completed. Royale doesn’t release production numbers for six months after completion, she said, as time is needed to tell pressure, ensure stability and determine the life of the well.

Nonetheless, things look very promising, and Royale soared more than 20% to an all-time high of $14.70 in intraday trades. The company looks to join a fellow driller who is benefiting from early tests.

In the release that detailed the application, Royale also said its 2008 director slate was elected with a near unanimous 97.8% of the vote. Given the way things are going over there, this is hardly a surprise.

Crude-oil futures staged a dramatic reversal in midday trading Thursday, at one point falling nearly $6 below its intraday high before recovering. Traders attributed the reversal to a combination of factors, including a sharp drop in natural gas prices, the options expiration of the June contract and broad fund-selling as traders locked in profits.

But for market bulls, there is little to fear.

UBS Investment Research’s Jan Stuart joined the growing chorus of Wall Street economists Thursday in predicting that the oil bull market still has much further room to run as demand growth is accelerating and supply remains tight.

“We are abandoning the idea of a near-term collapse in oil prices under the weight of a U.S. recession,” Stuart said in a research note.

UBS now expects the price for Brent oil will average $113.50 per barrel this year, $120 barrel in 2009 and $116 barrel in 2010. The new forecasts are 30%, 52% and 55% higher than prior estimates, and exceed consensus by 25% for 2008. For WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil, the brokerage forecasts the price will average $115 this year, $120 next year, and $116 in 2010, which are 32%, 54% and 53% higher than previous forecasts.

Oil prices have rallied so sharply and counter-intuitively in the last seven months that it’s tempting to think that speculation or the slumping dollar are to blame, Stuart said. But when you look closely, it’s clear that fundamentals are at work, that oil markets are tight in key places and that relief from that tightening is still several quarters away, he said.

Real demand growth for several key oil products accelerated last winter, while their supply was constrained. “The resultant tension in oil markets has not abated,” he said. “Stress may well intensify this summer and in any case should play out all over again next winter. We therefore see no reason for prices to ‘correct’ until mid-2009.”

As oil hits record highs almost daily, many Wall Street analysts have been rushing to revise their oil price forecasts upward. Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs Arjun Murti argued that the possibility of oil at $150 to $200 per barrel “seems increasingly likely” over the next six to 24 months. In late April, CIBC World Markets wrote in a report that the “unprecedented scarcity” in supply will push oil prices to $150 a barrel by 2010, and $225 a barrel by 2012.

But a recent survey of oil and gas executives showed a majority expect oil prices will drop “significantly” from the current record level to less than $100 a barrel by the end of the year.

With record oil prices standing alongside mortgage market woes and general fears of a recession, it’s no surprise that, going into the busy summer travel season, the price at the pump is on the mind of nearly every American . It’s also on the mind of America’s elected officials, who are tending to an electorate that is increasingly demanding action to bring the price of oil down.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives and Senate voted decisively to cease depositing oil in the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) in an attempt to do just that. The measure was passed by a landslide 385 to 25 vote margin in the House, while the Senate passed it 97 to 1. (Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supported the measure, while John McCain didn’t vote.)

No elected official wants to be on the side of anything that could potentially lower gas prices, but how effective will the measure be?

Not at all, apparently. That’s according to Megan Barnett, a spokeswoman at the Department of Energy, who said that the “very modest rate” that oil is deposited in the reserve “has no appreciable impact on gas and oil prices.”

Her math makes sense. About 70,000 barrels are deposited into the SPR a day, which represents a miniscule 0.4% of the roughly 20 million barrels used each day by the U.S. (As of yesterday, the SPR was housing 702.7 million barrels, equal to 97% of its roughly 727 million barrel maximum capacity. With a full tank, it can serve the nation’s oil needs for about 36 days.)

Giving 70,000 extra barrels a day to a country that uses 20 million will provide some relief, but given the size of consumption compared with the size of the relief, it could end up being equivalent to loosening your belt one notch after eating 100 Thanksgiving dinners.

Nonetheless, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speculated that the move could ease gas prices by 5 cents to 24 cents a gallon. Others disagreed. Joe Barton, the top Republican on the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee said that “if all the members of the House would go out onto the steps and clap our hands three times and say, ‘Down prices, down prices,’ that would have as much impact as passing this bill.”

In the current environment, this sounds a bit contrarian: Many oil and gas executives expect oil prices will drop “significantly” from the current record level to less than $100 a barrel by the end of the year, a new survey conducted by KPMG’s Global Energy Institute showed.

The survey results came as crude-oil futures prices surged to a record of $126.20 a barrel Friday, fueled by weakness in the U.S. dollar, worries over supply disruptions and speculative demand.

About 55% of the 372 financial executives from oil and gas companies surveyed think that crude oil price will drop below $100 by the end of the year, while only 9% believe it will close at above $120.

Some 21% of the executives think oil will close the year between $101 and $110, while 15% think it may end between $111 and $120.

What’s more, the survey found that while 44% of the respondents felt prices would peak by the end of the year, a further 39% thought that they would not peak until after 2010.

Oil prices have doubled over the past year. About 63% of oil and gas executives said that growing demand from emerging markets is the major contributor to the high price of oil.

Many Wall Street analysts have been rushing to revise their oil price forecasts upward recently. Earlier this week, Goldman Sachs Arjun Murti argued that the possibility of oil at $150 to $200 per barrel “seems increasingly likely” over the next six to 24 months. In late April, CIBC World Markets wrote in a report that the “unprecedented scarcity” in supply will push oil prices to $150 a barrel by 2010, and $225 a barrel by 2012.

Also worth noting is that many oil and gas executives still do not see renewable energy as a “serious near-term solution” in the energy supply equation, even though they say there should be more investment in the industry. Last year, 60% said that it will not be viable to mass produce any alternative fuels by the year 2010. This year, 54% gave the same response when asked about the year 2015.

“While [the] survey showed that executives view alternative fuels as a long-term solution for the energy supply equation, they see other, existing clean air energy sources as more realistic in the next 20 years,” KPMG said.

High oil prices are here to stay.

The global oil market is much tighter than expected. Oil production is hardly growing, while global demand, especially in emerging market economies, continues to rise sharply. This “unprecedented scarcity” in supply will push oil prices to $150 a barrel by 2010, and $225 a barrel by 2012, CIBC World Markets said in a new energy report Thursday.

For U.S. motorists, this means skyrocketing consumer gas prices, with the national average price easily topping $4 a gallon this summer, reaching $5.50 in the summer of 2010, and hitting close to $7 by 2012, the report said.

Increasing car ownership in Brazil, Russia, India, China and elsewhere in the developing world will play a vital role in driving oil prices higher over the next few years, said CIBC chief economist Jeff Rubin. Transport fuels now account for half of the world’s oil usage,and have driven over 90% of demand growth in recent years, he said.

“Car purchases in Russia, for example, are exploding as U.S. sales stagnate,” Rubin said. “While in India the advent of the Tata, a car that will sell for as little as $2,500, will allow millions of households in the developing world to own automobiles when they otherwise could not. Millions of new households will suddenly have straws to start sucking at the world’s rapidly shrinking oil reserves.”

Car sales in 2007 grew by nearly 60% in Russia, 30% in Brazil and 20% in China. During the same period, car sales declined in the U.S. and were flat in Europe. Rubin added that this new and growing market for oil will see world crude prices continue to rise and kill demand in the more price-sensitive Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development markets.

In order to accommodate more drivers on the road in Russia, China and India, there must be fewer drivers in the U.S. and the rest of the OECD, “and so there will be,” Rubin said. “U.S. oil consumption is likely to fall by over two million barrels a day over the next five years as retail gasoline prices rise from their current $3.60 a gallon mark to almost $7 a gallon.”