You might think you’re properly invested in oil, but you could be wrong.

Despite reaching lows since 2004, the long-term outlook for oil is still up. Maybe not $147 a barrel like the old days (i.e. six months ago), but because of supply, demand, turmoil in the Middle East, and the fact that we will eventually resume worldwide economic growth, oil prices have only one way to go.

If you think you’ve positioned yourself according, or if you’re thinking about a new investment in crude oil… tread carefully. Here’s why:

I uncovered a situation last week call contango. It’s a feature of futures markets where you can buy crude oil cheap right now and lock in a contract to sell it in the future for a higher price. Normally, the difference between those prices is so close to the cost of storing the oil that it’s not a profitable trade.

But right now, we’re in a state of super-contango. Prices are way out of whack. And commodity investors are storing crude oil everywhere they can to earn the excess profits.

Contango is big news now. But some of the “traditional” oil investments that are being tossed around aren’t what they seem to be. In fact, if you skipped some very fine print, you could have set yourself up for a huge disappointment.

So let’s clear that up… and pad our pockets with a little extra cash in the process.

The Crude Oil Contango - How To Profit

When we broke the news on the crude oil contango, we suggested looking at some oil storage providers, explorers and drillers. And that hasn’t changed. Looking around, there are a number of “oil investments” that look promising.

One would think the quickest way to invest in rising oil prices would be to simply buy shares of an oil-based ETF, like United States Oil (NYSE: USO). These oil ETFs are very popular - USO trades over 34 million shares per day.

But not so fast.

These funds don’t buy and sell crude oil for profit. They trade futures contracts on oil.