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Study after study has shown that stocks with low price-to-earnings multiples significantly outperform high P/E stocks. Research from my favorite investing guru, NYU professor Aswath Damodaran, pegged the outperformance at anywhere from 9% to 12% per year, depending on the study period. That's big money we're talking about.

You might be thinking wait a minute... but hold on;

There are 234 energy companies with market caps topping $500 million on major U.S. exchanges. They have an average forward P/E of 26.9. Here are my parameters:

1. In order to stay away from bankruptcy risk, I used Damodaran's suggestion, and only considered companies with total debt less than 60% of capital.
2. In hopes of capturing a reasonable amount of growth, I looked at Capital IQ's long-term estimates, and kept only companies expected to grow EPS at 5% annually or better over the next five years. Furthermore, I required at least 5% annualized growth over the past five years.

Expect to see more coverage and research posted to our site in the coming weeks as well as updated videos about market topics that can be viewed on our investment channel. Find out more information about oil stocks and the supporting research.

Of the 44 companies passing the screen, here are the 15 with the lowest forward price-to-earnings multiples: