Oil ETFs For the Long Term : DBO, SPY, USL, USO

With gold being the major growth story in the commodity world, oil's ascent to $144 per barrel in July of 2008 is a distant memory. However, since bottoming in February 2009, oil has regained some of it previous glory to currently sit around at $94.34. As the economy recovers, industries with start increasing their oil consumption, which will cause the price of oil to bubble up. Let's take a look at a few oil focused exchange-traded funds that could be good additions to your portfolio in the mean time.

ETF	Current Price	YTD % Return	Expense Ratio	Net Assets
U.S. Oil Fund ETF (ARCA:USO)	$37.56	-0.56%	0.78%	$1.12B
PowerShares DB Oil ETF (ARCA:DBO)	$28.02	1.70%	0.54%	$552M
U.S. 12 Month Oil ETF (ARCA:USL)	$42.70	1.60%	1.10%	$184M

Crude Focus
The PowerShares DB Oil ETF is currently up the most among the ETFs listed above in terms of returns since the beginning of the year. The DBO fund is composed of futures contracts on light sweet crude oil (West Texas Intermediate). DBO's 0.54% expense ratio is well above the 0.09% an investor would pay for the SPDRS S&P 500 Index Fund (NYSE:SPY), and it is the cheapest among its peers.

Crude Oil Plus
The U.S. Oil ETF also tracks the performance of light, sweet crude oil (WTI). In addition to holding futures contracts on light sweet crude oil, the USO fund may also invest in non-negotiated contracts with less liquidity than futures contracts and in taxable money market funds like the Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) FS Government Select. Leading the group of oil ETFs in terms of total assets, the USO fund also has the second lowest expense ratio of 0.78%.

A Dozen in the Other
The U.S. 12 Month Oil ETF tracks the performance of light, sweet crude oil (WTI) by calculating the daily movement of the average price of 12 futures contracts on crude oil.

Final Thoughts
Oil futures can be a volatile addition to any portfolio, so it's helpful to understand available ETF options that investors can choose from in order to capture the future upward movement of oil prices.