6 stocks set to soar

This is our most speculative pick by far. OYO Geospace is a small - $260 million market cap, $140 million in annual revenue - oilfield technology company with a potentially super-lucrative niche. The company designs and manufactures seismic sensors used to map underground oil and gas reservoirs.

It's already a pretty hot business, but two developments could make it hotter. For one, if the current oil-drilling debate in Congress yields an agreement to open some or all of the East and West Coast outer continental shelf to oil drilling, the first thing oil companies are going to do is conduct 3-D seismic surveys of the areas where they might like to acquire leases. That should mean more demand for OYO Geospace systems.

Second, the company has a head start on new 4-D seismic technology that's being used not so much to explore for new oilfields but to maximize production at existing ones. The fourth dimension in 4-D is time, and by putting permanent seismic sensors on the ocean floor, OYO Geospace can model how oil reservoirs are evolving, allowing oil companies to drill more efficiently.

When BP had the very first OYO Geospace 4-D system installed at one of its North Sea oilfields, the technology helped identify an additional 60 million barrels of recoverable oil.

NEXT: Ladish