Buy Exxon Mobil Corp

It was really, really great news for Exxon Mobil (XOM)—if you’re a really, really long-term investor. In early June, the company announced that it was in talks with TransCanada (TRP) to invest in the massively expensive Alaska Gas Pipeline project. With Exxon Mobil on board the project stands a good chance of getting built—since the company controls about half the natural gas in Alaska’s Northern Slope fields. For Exxon Mobil the pipeline would be a way to get natural gas from its Point Thompson field, where drilling began in the spring of 2009, to market. Of course, the pipeline won’t even come up for approval before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (or FERC, one of my favorite Washington acronyms) until 2014 or so. As of June 2009, I’m leaving my target price for Exxon Mobil at $91 a share by March 2010. (Full disclosure: I own shares of Exxon Mobil in my personal portfolio.)