Record Profits by Oil & Gas Companies

It’s not the first time this has happened. Energy companies have always had highs and lows in oil prices. The difference today is three-fold, (1) the investor base, (2) the Oil Companies are not willing to lose money when the market ultimately declines, which it will, and (3) The staggering increase in demand sparked by the speed at which the world has reopened after 2 years of Covid-19 world-wide pandemic lockdowns.

https://www.statista.com/stati...
Historically, people with excess cash would be speculative and invest in oil and gas. Today that speculative money is being placed in crypto currency, ETF’s or Reedit trading schemes. https://oilprice.com/Energy/En...
The oil and gas investors are saying “we are tired of losses when the price of oil goes down.” That has the entire energy industry stating, “We are taking the profits and giving back to shareholders as dividends and stock buy-backs.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/o...
“We are not investing heavily in new rigs, just trying to get as much out of what we currently have.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0...
Exxon, which is based in Texas, announced that it would buy back more of its own shares, now aiming to spend $30 billion through 2023, up from $10 billion, which will increase the value of the shareholder’s existing stock, but do nothing to lower gas prices.

It is easy to say the price is up due to governmental environmental restrictions and halting the extension to the current Keystone pipeline. The oil companies are very honest by saying that they are going to reward shareholders with the high returns by not investing big in new exploration and rigs because they know the prices will eventually fall below the profitable amount (remember in 2020, oil sold for $0/barrel and gas was $2/gallon because there was no demand-Lockdowns). The Keystone extension was not scheduled to be completed until the end of 2022 or in 2023, so that would not help in the short term (and there was no conflict with Russia).

Supply and Demand………. Profits vs Consumer affordability......