I hope you guys know by now our primary goal here at the SCN is to inform our Members of small cap breakouts before anyone else does. (If you didn't, then there ya' go.) Well, there's been some pretty interesting volume activity for one particular small cap in the oil and gas industry - which has been red hot lately - and it's just begging the bulls to step in. See the nearby chart? That's Bering Exploration (BERX), and it's about the best-looking technical setup I've seen all year. Specifically, it's (1) got longer-term bullish momentum, (2) is just coming out of a short-term pullback, (3) is finding support at a couple of key moving averages, and, (4) is revving its engines again on higher volume. It's the last clue - volume - that means the most for current or potential Bering Exploration investors right now. We've seen this before... a stock perks up for no particular reason, and the buyers start to wade in in stronger numbers than they've been wading out in. Nine times out of ten it's because somebody knows something nobody else knows, or institutions are testing the waters. Either way, the end result is usually a stock that just gets catapulted higher with little to no warning. Of course, you can wait until after it's off and running and then try to chase it down like a slow kid chasing an ice cream truck. Or, you can take the hints you've been given for Bering while they can do you some good. All that being said, this is one of those rare cases where the chart's actually starting to reflect the underlying opportunity. (Yeah - it still happens every now and then.) Going (Back) to Where the Oil Is If you're a follower of the energy sector and a fan of junior explorers, you'll probably be aware of what I'm about to tell you. If not, then buckle up... though I'll keep the ride as brief as possible. Bering Exploration is working on four different explorations right now - South Chambers, the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford (all in Texas), and the Gulf Coast. More may be on the way, but it's the Eagle Ford opportunity that's got traders in a tizzy. Remember a few days ago when BHP Billiton (BHP) acquired Petrohawk Energy (HK) and sent the stock soaring from $23.49 to $38.25? That 'mere' 63% premium was what BHP was willing to pay to gain access to Petrohawk's assets.... which were mostly in Haynesville, Eagle Ford, and the Permian Basin. Any of those ring a bell? All told, Billiton paid about $20,000 per acre for Petrohawk's Eagle Ford assets, where Bering Exploration has drilling rights to 1200 acres. And here's the thing - that land was probably worth every penny BHP Billiton paid. See, there's oil in the shale fields of Eagle Ford. Drillers abandoned the area a few years ago because shale mining was too expensive or too difficult, and because the traditional drilling process had extracted all the crude oil that could reasonably be extracted there. (Oil shale is just a fine-grain sedimentary rock which contains - you guessed it - crude oil material.) In the meantime though, new drilling and exploration technologies along with improvement of old ones have made shale mining viable again. And, through a process called remediation, old mines that had previously been assumed to be empty can actually be reopened and made productive again. This is where it gets crazy interesting. You know how much oil is waiting to be extracted from Eagle Ford that oil companies just didn't know was there or how to get to until now? It's only the biggest oil discovery in the U.S. for the last 40 years, and the world's sixth largest (known) oil field. Are you freakin' kidding me? How in the world geologists have been missing this one up until now is beyond me, but that's not even important any more. What's important now is that Bering Exploration believes it's got access to $285 million worth (3 million barrels) of crude oil at its 1200 acres in the Eagle Ford shale area. Now, compare that to the current $16.5 million market cap for BERX. Let's just say the math more than works out to investors' advantage. Between these numbers and the other multi-million explorations and developments it's got going on right now - paired with the brewing bullish chart - I think Bering Exploration is just one of those trades you have to take a shot on. The Whole Kit & Caboodle OK, just to keep it short and sweet I skipped some of the details on BERX. If you really want to dig deeper into the nitty gritty though, a bunch of the site's contributors have chimed in on this junior explorer over the past couple of days. Better still, there's a very comprehensive overview and analysis accessible from the stock's main page at the SCN site. Just go here, and in the lower part of the left-hand column in the 'BERX Research Media' area look for the 'Bering Exploration Company Report' PDF. It's got the detailed scoop. If you're looking to pull the trigger now, I'll just wrap up with this - I don't know that Bering Exploration is an acquisition candidate. I do know that CNOOC, Anadarko, ConocoPhillips, along with several other major and not-so-major oil names are tripping over one another to get into the Eagle Ford area though, with $8.2 billion worth of M&A deals going down in South Texas during 2010. So, it may get bought five minutes from now, or never. It doesn't really matter though. If Bering doesn't follow in the footsteps of Petrohawk and get snatched up at a fat premium, then it will just keep working on its projects and drive value the old-fashioned way. Either way works for me.