Investors are skittish about oil stocks these days, so much so that a recent move by Westwood oil firm California Resources Corp. – a move many of its peers had already made – prompted a big sell-off.

On Jan. 12, Todd Stevens, the company’s chief executive, was quoted in a Bloomberg News story as saying the company had idled some drilling rigs, an unsurprising move as oil companies around the nation have done likewise recently amid falling oil prices. Oil has slumped 60 percent over the past six months, giving oil firms less incentive to drill new wells.

But as soon as the Bloomberg story hit the wires, investors dumped their California Resources shares, driving the price down about 10 percent that day and an additional 12 percent the next day, to just under $4 a share.

The stock rebounded slightly to $4.11 on Jan. 14, but for the week ended that day, California Resources shares had fallen 11 percent, making the company one of the biggest losers on the LABJ Stock Index. (See page 26.)

One analyst who has followed California Resources since its Nov. 30 spinoff from Occidental Petroleum Corp. of Houston called the sell-off an over-reaction.

“Rationally speaking, there should not be such a negative market reaction to the comments by Todd Stevens,” said Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst in the Houston office of Raymond James and Associates of St. Petersburg, Fla. “It is entirely normal for companies to mothball some rigs while oil prices are this low – indeed, that’s occurring worldwide right now.”

But investors in oil companies are cautious. Any piece of unwelcome news, no matter how small, gets magnified, Molchanov said.

However, California Resources is particularly vulnerable to sudden sell-offs, he said. The company has $6 billion in debt, incurred when it paid a big dividend to Oxy shareholders as part of its spinoff. It’s a big load by industry standards and investors are likely worried that if oil prices stay low, the debt could force the company to cut capital spending even more. Molchanov noted that other oil companies with higher-than-average debt loads – including Energy XXI and BPZ Resources, both of Houston – have experienced similar sell-offs.

Also, with the California Resources spinoff only recently completed, some of the Occidental shareholders who received California Resources shares might be trying to get rid of them. Molchanov said that although this dumping of shares had tapered off after the first week of trading, Stevens’ comments likely triggered another round of selling by Occidental investors with little appetite for shares of a California-focused company.