Standard & Poor’s Equity Research analyst Michael Kay is upgrading from Hold to Buy on EOG Resources Inc., Houston, (NYSE: EOG) shares and raising the 2008 earnings-per-share estimate by $2.23 to $9.31.
            

“We have lifted our second-quarter earnings-per-share estimate to $2.27 from $2.09 on an expected 14% production boost on gas hikes in the Barnett shale and oil gains in North Dakota’s Bakken play,” Kay says. “With the recent drop in EOG’s share price, we see the stock as more attractively valued and view strong production growth and a dominant position in unconventional oil and gas plays as catalysts.”
            

EOG Resources, together with its subsidiaries, has operations in the U.S., Canada, offshore Trinidad, and the U.K. North Sea. The company also holds interests in the Fort Worth Basin, the Upper Gulf Coast area, the Permian Basin, the Rocky Mountain area, the Mid-Continent area, south Texas and the Gulf of Mexico, and the Appalachian Basin with about 3.2 million net undeveloped acres in the U.S. JAS