“The latest Mideast crisis is just another good reason to … own energy stocks,” one of the country’s sharpest oil minds, Alan Gaines, tells me.

The former crack institutional energy analyst and current CEO of Houston-based Dune Energy was reacting to Iran’s capture last Friday of 15 British sailors and marines while they were on routine patrol off the waters of southern Iraq.

He’s hardly alone in his view of the tense situation, which, over the past week, drove the price of oil to as much as $68 a barrel from the high $50s before backing down to the low $60s and closing yesterday about $66. Not unexpectedly, oil stocks spurted after the detention of the hostages, with a number rising a fast 3% to 7%.

“It’s as though investors have rediscovered Exxon Mobil and Chevron,” money manager Selwyn Ortz, a principal of Hong Kong-based HK Investments Ltd., tells me.

While most Middle East watchers say they believe it’s only a matter of time before the British hostages are released, the view of some market pros, such as D.A. Davidson & Co.’s chief investment strategist, Fred Dickson, is that this incident should not be ignored. It’s a reminder, he says, that the Middle East remains a tinderbox; it has raised international tensions a few notches, and it’s yet another sign that the oil market is vulnerable to an immediate disruption at any time.

The end result, he says, adds up to both higher oil and higher energy stock prices. “You still have to own the energy sector,” he says.

Describing Iran’s anti-West leader, President Ahmadinejad, as “a loose cannon,” Mr. Gaines says he believes any new sanctions imposed on the country could make it even more hawkish on oil prices. Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter and provides 5% of the world’s oil needs.

Noting that “a whole bunch of crazies control the world’s oil,” Mr. Gaines says he thinks the prospective price for petroleum should now be revised upward. He sees oil trading the rest of the year between a low of $55 a barrel and a high of $100, and says 2007 will wrap up at around the $70 level. “I doubt that we’ll see sub-$40 in our lifetime,” he says.

His three favorite energy stocks — each of which he owns personally — are Chesapeake Energy, ConocoPhillips, and Allis-Chalmers Energy. He says he believes Chesapeake and Conoco offer potential 20% gains during the next 12 months; Allis-Chalmers between 50% and 100%.

Mr. Ortz maintains that you can’t rule out the possibility that an emboldened and hawkish Iran might seek to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which a third of the world’s oil passes. It’s also the only sea route through which oil can be transported from Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Such an action by Iran, he says, would push the price of oil to between $100 and $150 a barrel in speedy fashion.

The British-Iran crisis, Mr. Ortz believes, has given energy stocks a shot in the arm. As such, his firm, which has been taking profits on some energy shares that have racked up sizable gains, among them Exxon Mobil, Schlumberger, and Chevron, has stopped, theorizing they could now head somewhat higher. It has also been fattening its stake in ConocoPhillips.

Taking note of the Middle East crisis, veteran market adviser Martin Weiss contends that chances of a conflict with Iran have risen sharply. It could drive oil prices, he says, to new all-time highs and set the stage for an upsurge in inflation the likes of which have not been seen since (the double-digit numbers of ) the late 1970s. As such, Mr. Weiss, editor of the Safe Money Report newsletter out of Jupiter, Fla., urges a more cautious investment stance and suggests the following actions:

• Avoid long-term bonds and any investment that locks you into a fixed yield.

• Stay short term and liquid, favoring Treasury bills or a Treasury-only money-market fund.

• Diversify internationally by spreading money among countries with strong growth prospects, such as Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, and China.

• Fight inflationary dangers with precious metal, energy, and alterative energy investments.

• Hedge by buying exchangetraded funds, such as Ultra-Short Financial Pro-Shares, that are designed to go up when financial stocks go down.

An obvious question: What happens to oil if the hostages are released? As Mr. Ortz sees it, the price of oil and energy stocks will drop, but probably only modestly and temporarily because of renewed investor awareness of both the threat of new supply disruptions and another Middle East crisis. “The big premium in the price of oil is not about to evaporate,” he says.

dandordan@aol.com