Based on the earnings forecast of offshore drillers like Transocean (RIG), Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO) and Noble (NE), the offshore oil drilling boom is likely to continue for years to come. In fact Transocean earned over $1 billion in just the first quarter of this year. We picked up Diamond Offshore Drilling (DO) for the InsideArbitrage model portfolio in January 2007 and have been rewarded with a gain of over 70% over 16 months despite the recent pullback in the stock. Diamond Offshore was a proxy investment for rising oil prices and it appears that choppers could be a proxy for the offshore drilling boom based on the number of large offshore oil finds in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Brazil over the last few years.
Four popular chopper models were mentioned in the sidebar accompanying the Fortune article. The Sikorsky S92 and S76 used for executive travel and by offshore drillers, the smaller AW119 Ke used by traffic reporters and the larger Boeing Chinook used to transport civilian cargo.