Buying shares of BP wasn’t the popular trade. It was the opposite of the comfortable move to make at the time. I know I felt icky and weird even talking about it. I was one of very few prognosticators making the same recommendation.

And right now, I wouldn’t call BP a buy.

In fact, I wouldn’t recommend buying shares of any of the “blue-chip” oil companies right now. Even though some of them are trading at relatively cheap valuations, they’ve all had an amazing run over the past four to six months.

Today, oil is selling at its 52 week highs.

But one of my favorite ways to invest in rising oil prices is still only slightly more expensive than it was four months ago.

There's a lot of buzz in the oil markets these days, and while we've been kind of lulled into complacency with oil in the $75-$80/barrel range, this situation won't last forever.

It might not even last for long, and right now there's a unique opportunity to buy a highly specialized mid-cap oil company. I'll get to this company in a bit...

In the meantime, the United States currently has one of the largest stockpiles of oil it's ever had, with over 1.13 billion barrels of petroleum inventory - or about 60 days worth of supply at current rates of consumption.

The news immediately caused oil futures to dip - briefly below $75 a barrel.

That'sabout the average price for 2010, year to date: