Well, the first thing I should mention today is that yes, NEP’s troubles with AMEX were more immediate than I had guessed they would be — if that’s not a story you’ve been following, China North East Petroleum (NEP) was one of my “Idea of the Month” stocks a couple weeks ago, when the price fell because of their need to restate their financials. I did note that it was a speculative play, but I didn’t expect to see trading halted for an extended period, which might be what happens. I’ve been following the story, but it was only yesterday that they finally said something after the trading halt went into effect earlier this week over their failure to provide updated financials — my latest comment on that is here, FYI).

But now, on to today’s Friday File — I still think oil stocks are worth looking at, though oil prices have recovered a bit, and I still certainly like Husky Energy (HUSKF on the pink sheets) … and I do personally own some NEP calls, which are also frozen right now … but let’s look at something different.

So what’ll it be? Well, the Stansberry folks are still all over the Altius Minerals (ATUSF on the pink sheets) story, apparently featuring them in yesterday’s conference call (not being a subscriber I can’t say for sure), and I’m also getting a lot of questions about the farmland hedge fund (that being Sprott Resource’s One Earth Farms) … but both of those were featured in last week’s Friday File, so I don’t have any more to say on that topic.

And my old favorite oil drilling company, Seadrill, released their earnings — which disappointed a bit due largely to financial items, but included a dividend boost that, if it continues, gets them to a yield of almost 12%. If you don’t have exposure to deep water drillers and want to make a contrarian bet as the tragic Gulf oil spill continues, I expect Seadrill (which now trades at SDRL on the NYSE after their April US listing came through) to continue churning out cash. They’ll continue to be highly leveraged, and use financial engineering and take more risks than US drillers … but if past experience with other Fredriksen companies (particularly Frontline) holds true they will go above and beyond to spit far more cash out to shareholders than a ...