raggmann54 - good summary. I have some oil producer stock with offices in TX and their major leases in the Permian Basin. Pick any oil company and read their latest stockholder report. It's correct they are now making record profits with very little new capital outlay. Some of these smaller companies are still trying to recover when the oil they produced was a liability because there wasn't a market for it and they had to pay storage tanks to store it.
They are buying their stock back and paying dividends to their shareholders, some for the first time in a long time. The 2 annual reports that I read from these smaller companies is they watched what happened when Obama went after coal mining and brought the industry to its knees. Biden would love to do the same thing to the oil and gas industry per campaign speeches (I voted for him due to my family connections in his inner circle). There's also a faction in Washington that would love to be using 90% alternative energy sources by 2030 (or sooner according to the 'Squad'). There's just no way to recoup the millions/billions of dollars it's going to take to go through all the steps raggmann outlined and sink capital into equipment to produce with a short window before it slams shut.
I think it's going to take a new energy policy with all of the factions at the table to hammer out a reasonable time frame to shift to alts. Otherwise, the ROI just isn't there and oil companies are now maximizing their returns on past investments they made.
I see inflation continuing to be way too high and unsustainable over the next year. I personally believe we will have high inflation until oil and gas substantially retreats in price because it is a common thread in what's driving up prices (transportation, packaging, fertilizer, food processing/manufacturing, etc). Or, a deep recession could put a lid on spending in an overheated market but who wants that? A new energy policy would provide a road map to ramp up production to drop prices BUT ALSO provide a timeline for the near total phase-out of fossil fuels as alternative energy sources are on-line to handle more of the grid. This sure would help Big Oil justify spending the capital necessary to begin extraction efforts again. Just my $.02 worth.
