Here’s another satisfied reader.

“I don’t know if you ever review the stories you do, but you certainly threw a touchdown with the ones I saw on your energy expert, Alan Gaines,”April May writes. “I know because I bought four of his stock recommendations. They’re all up and two of the companies were taken over. All told, I have made almost $22,000 on his picks. If you see him, give him a big hug and kiss from me, ask him if he’s single, and what he likes now.”

I’ll let you deliver your own tokens of affection, Ms. May, but I did ring him up and he says he is not married.

Mr. Gaines, a former crack institutional energy analyst who is now CEO of a small oil and gas producer, Houston-based Dune Energy, favors a number of energy shares, all of which he owns personally. He tells me one of his best bets —his next gusher on the energy takeover front — is Houston-based Pogo Producing.

Surprisingly, he favors the stock despite his disenchantment with what he describes as the company’s “inept management” and comparatively poor operating results, which, he notes, is why the stock is universally panned by analysts.

Reflecting this disenchantment, Pogo has been a dog of a stock in a market environment in which the energy sector, largely due to surging oil prices, has run wild in recent years, far outpacing the general market.

The stock, which closed Friday at $53.23, traded at $50 in February 1997, $46 in June 2003, and $50 in January 2004.

To make money in Pogo, he says, a catalyst is required, and a catalyst is precisely what Mr. Gaines sees in the next three to six months. Thus, expect a dramatic development — either a takeover of the company at a considerably higher price or a leverage recapitalization (which is where a company usually borrows money to purchase a big chunk of its stock and then sells off some assets to pay for the debt service).

That’s exactly what another energy biggie, Kerr McGee, did earlier this year to escape the clutches of corporate raider Carl Icahn. Its stock soared. Mr. Gaines, a one-time adviser to Mr. Icahn in takeover attempts of such energy companies as Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, and Marathon Oil, figures a recapitalization would probably boost Pogo’s shares by 30%–35%.

Mr. Gaines believes Pogo — which has proven reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 144 million barrels of oil — will not exist in its current form in six months. The chief reason, he says: “There’s blood in the water, and the sharks are already circulating.”

This is a reference to two stockholders, one of whom is aggressive, who combined own 9.5 million shares, or 16.4%, of Pogo’s stock (versus the company’s management, which owns less than 1% of the stock).

One holder is billionaire investor Robert Rowling, whose firm, TRT Holdings of Irving, Tex., owns 9.2% of the stock, or 5,345,000 shares. The other is New York hedge fund Third Point LLC, headed by activist money manager Daniel Loeb, which holds 7.2% of the stock, or 4.2 million shares.

Mr. Loeb didn’t return calls seeking comment, but there’s talk coming out of his firm, I’m told, that a proxy fight could be on the way.

Mr. Gaines, who is understood to own about 200,000 Pogo shares at an average price of $42 a share, views a proxy fight for control of the company as a distinct possibility.

Mr. Gaines places the value of Pogo’s assets at north of $80 a share and figures any acquisition is likely to take place in the $72-$75 a share range, or roughly at a price of $4.5 billion. Potential buyers are thought to include such companies as ConocoPhillips, Marathon Oil, and Apache Petroleum, or one of the majors.

Pogo, Mr. Gaines believes, may already have a white knight in Mitsui, a large Japanese industrial company that has purchased half of Pogo’s properties in the Gulf of Mexico.

What’s Pogo’s reaction to Mr. Gaines’s observations? None. The company didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.

Mr. Gaines’s personal portfolio of energy stocks also includes Allis Chalmers Energy, Arena Resources, Carizo Oil and Gas, Marathon Oil, and Chesapeake Energy. Over the next 12 months, he figures their shareholders will also strike gushers by chalking up gains ranging between 15% and 30%.

dandordan@aol.com