Following the energy companies through their earnings for a number of years now it as become apparent to me that while it is extremely difficult to predict earnings going into the future, nobody even does a mediocre job at this for a number of energy companies.  This is very understandable for small capitalization companies as well as refiners as well as exploration and production companies because their mid-quarter transparency is not very high for the most part.  This shouldn’t be true many of the majors integrated companies, and it definitely is not true for companies such as Noble Corp. [NE: 30.21, 0.00 (0.00%)], one of the three largest deepwater drilling companies.  The actions of analysts before and after the earnings release and conference call continue to confuse me, especially when you consider that Noble’s revenues come from

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Rowan Companies, Inc. (RDC) almost gained in the double digits on Thursday as shares jumped 9.5% on the back of its fourth-quarter report.

Excluding a number of items, RDC reported $1.28 per share, while analysts were anticipating $1.09. The result also was an improvement over the year-ago quarter.

Revenues declined a bit to $613 million from $623.6 million a year earlier.

RDC, which is a major provider of contract drilling services, believes it is in a very strong financial position for what will likely be a difficult 2009. The company has 67% of its total offshore rig days currently committed for the year.

RDC is a Zacks #3 Rank ("hold") company.

"RDC" Free Stock Analysis: Buy? Sell? Hold?Zacks Investment Research

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I wanted to try to briefly review a stock today and looking through the list of top % gainers on the NYSE, I came across Ensco (ESV) which as I write is trading at $78.65, up $4.21 or 5.66% on the day.  I do not own any shares nor do I have any options on this stock.  However, I would like to share with you briefly why

ENSCO (ESV) IS RATED A BUY

First of all, what do they …