Oil prices are hovering around 10-month highs, as a stout summer rally extends into the fall and delivers additional gains for the Club’s energy stocks, Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) and Coterra Energy (CTRA). And Jim Cramer believes it’s not too late to buy either of them. West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. oil benchmark, has jumped 32% since its lows of the summer on June 12, to nearly $89 a barrel. Meanwhile, global oil standard Brent crude has climbed 28%, to around $92 a barrel. Both WTI and Brent on Tuesday settled at their highest levels since November. Over the same stretch since June 12, Pioneer stock has risen 17.1%, while Coterra gained 16.4%. That makes them the fifth and sixth best-performing Club stocks during that time — ahead of artificial intelligence winner Nvidia (NVDA), but behind pharmaceuticals giant Eli Lilly (LLY). Coterra on Tuesday closed at its highest level of the year, at $28.47 per share. Pioneer is about 3% off its 2023 peak of $243 per share, reached on Sept. 5. “I think that it is not too late to buy either of these,” Jim Cramer noted on Tuesday. The rise in oil prices largely boils down to a mismatch between supply and demand. Production cuts from major oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia and Russia have contributed to tighter supplies at a time when major economies have remained healthier than expected. Indeed, prices took a major leg higher last week after Saudi Arabia and Russia said they’d extend through year-end their voluntary output reductions of a combined 1.3 million barrels per day. This week’s move in crude was helped by a new report from the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries , which projected that oil demand will grow by 2.25 million barrels per day in 2024, citing economic resiliency. Saudi Arabia is the de-facto leader of OPEC. Russia is the oil cartel’s largest partner producer in an expanded group known as OPEC+ . The current backdrop may keep oil prices supported through the fall, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s short-term outlook published Tuesday . Citing Saudi Arabia’s production-cut extension and an expected further drawdown of global oil inventories, the government statistics agency forecasted Brent crude will average around $93 a barrel in the fourth quarter, less than 1% above where it settled Tuesday. If higher oil prices – and by extension fuel prices – are sustained in the coming months, the investment implications may be somewhat mixed. On one hand, Pioneer and Coterra would likely generate more free cash flow than in the first half of 2023 , which could lead to increased share repurchases and higher dividend payouts — key reasons investors like us are in the stocks. On the other hand, it may complicate the Federal Reserve’s efforts to squash inflation through higher interest rates. For much of this year, the downward trend in oil prices contributed to lower year-over-year inflation readings . Now, “oil is the wildcard” that…
Read More: Here’s what Cramer thinks high oil prices mean for two energy stocks