Send Murphy Oil Corp., the petroleum exploration and production titan with a century of history in El Dorado, reported optimistic first-quarter financial results last week in a world of surging oil and gasoline prices. And officials for the company, which moved its headquarters to Houston from south Arkansas a year ago, see optimistic signs for the industry for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic caused a commodities price collapse 13 months ago. The company reported a quarterly loss of $287 million on Thursday, about $1.87 per share. But the results surpassed Wall Street’s predictions, and Murphy stock was up above $20 a share on Monday morning, up from $16.96 a week earlier. And earnings adjusted for one-off gains and losses amounted to a positive 6 cents per share, compared with what the Associated Press described as an expected loss of 16 cents per share in an average of six analysts’ computations for Zacks Investment Research.