Hawsepiper: “iT’S AboUt AdmIN PoLICy!” 
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Funny nobody ever remembers this part.
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yes…your graphs show exactly what I’m talking about. With covid recovery underway and more money to spend, the majors are spending less of it (percentage wise) on capital expenditures and more on their investors…why is that? My contention is that they don’t trust the policies of the people in charge that their money won’t be wasted.
Thanks for the graphs.
And of course that doesn’t support the rig count.
What was oil price in 2017? You would expect majors to have major expenditures at $50 oil?
Come on man…
you are quite good at posting graphs…interpreting them however…
I haven’t seen that. I’ve only seen conservatives complaining about the effects of the free market.
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See the tall black line in 2022? There’s your rig count. Can’t sell oil if you don’t pump it. It could be much taller…it’s not and uncertain/anti industry policy from the top down is a major reason.
I can only see the green line and the actual rig count from well before.
Exactly. Which is why your analysis is flawed.
I’m the only one who brought data. You said no one would invest, yet they did invest and then siphoned profit for shareholders when prices were high instead of investing to lower prices for consumers. Odd way to say “you are right”, Hawsepiper.
Yes, you did and I thanked you for it as those graphs illustrated my point.
It’s funny to me that you interpreted my posts in this way. As if I think oil major’s investment has been/will be zero under this or any other administration. I’m confident any reasonable person would not come to that conclusion. You seem to be a visual learner, so perhaps if I say “the black lines are shorter than the green lines due to the anti industry stance of this administration” then you can understand.
This is how businesses react when you put them in an uncertain/outright hostile regulatory environment.
yet another failed analysis
Sorry, I missed this one…
If that’s the case, then you’ve got bigger blinders on than Mr. “I only see the green lines”.
Oof, this is painful.
We’re mariners, we tend not to focus on onshore domestic drilling, which is where we’ve lost over a million bpd since Biden took office. The GOM is busy because it’s expensive to work there and high prices make existing permitting profitable.
Shale wells have a short lifespan. Exploration and expansion is key. Refracking existing idle wells is a stopgap that might help but a short term answer.
As noted here, many companies are distributing capital to shareholders or staff and not reinvesting it. Why that has happens was explained adequately by Adam Smith over 200 years ago. Study.
You guys are all former epidemiologists and now economists, so hopefully you’re secret psychologists as well, because I am none of these things.
In the meanwhile, you’re all ignoring subjective issues in favor of objective, in a field with pricing that is heavily influenced by subjective perception, not just objective phenomena.
Look, every farmer knows that futures markets depend on a blend of subjective and objective reasoning. Look at the day after Trump’s election. Futures skyrocket and stagflation ends for no reason except optimistic feelings. The Dow explodes and starts its’ rocket ride up, based purely on hope.
You think the opposite isn’t happening here? . That’s good because the belief is that NEW leases, which shale oil needs, are not being made available. The disgusting ESG practices by the unelected fools in the Biden admin, has made bridge financing for the midstream industry a massive struggle. Everyone ignores the cash crunch. Further, shareholder activism is a thing. Do none of you guys read the news? There’a an ideological war going on inside the oil majors’ boardrooms. Activist investors like Blackrock with outsized political agendas are pursuing their own interests, not the companies’, and certainly not the public. The perception (and reality, seems to me) is that we’re eating our seed corn in the oil industry, and investors want out. Current federal policy has both fed and encouraged that divestment, and illustrated the volitility and instability of US energy policy, while activist investment capitalizes on that. Throwing money at shareholders is a holding action to keep them.
But what do I know. I’m not an economist, an epidemiologist, a proctologist or a psychologist like you experts here.
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Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t bring the USCG into this dog fight… 
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The only way this administration could support the oil industry and all of us is if they were an athletic supporter. Because they have all of our d___s in a wringer.
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First, let me get this out of the way: this administration has from the beginning publicly stated that they are not supporters of the oil and gas industry. There shouldn’t be any question about their intent, regardless of whether their actions have matched their rhetoric.
But to summarize what I’m reading here it seems people think that when:
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Oil prices are low, people are happy, it’s the Administration’s policies that created this greatness
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Oil prices low because demand is low because of a pandemic shutdown, people are mad and it’s not the Admin’s fault because they’re pro-oil
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Oil prices are low, so oil companies don’t invest, even when the admin at the time is pro-oil, but it’s not related to sentiment
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Oil prices are high, because of demand and the fact that oil companies paused investment, it is related to sentiment and is the admin’s fault for being anti-oil
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Oil companies don’t invest because prices are low, oil patch guys lose jobs and are mad, but hooray for low prices at the pump
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Oil companies invest because prices are high, oil patch guys get jobs/raises, boooo for high prices at the pump
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A well takes years to a decade to acquire/prepare/design/approve/drill/produce/come to market, but apparently the day a new Admin comes to office all that changes and no longer has anything to do with anything
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Oil prices rise/fall globally, but somehow its 100% Americas fault
I think the answer is that no one ever wins this argument.
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You forgot - if we only had Keystone XL - all the energy issues in the US would be solved. Maybe the world.
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I think your entire post is spot on. Anyone that thinks any president of the USA controls world oil prices to any large extent has no idea how commodities are priced.
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