No. of Recommendations: 2
Instead, we've seen virtually no change in supermajor productionDid you see Ford's May sales report? A contributor to their sales drop was the discontinuation of the Escape. The Escape had been a good seller for Ford, for decades. But, they dropped it. Ford's business model is to escalate ATP and GP. The Escape, being a lower priced model, dragged those metrics down, so they dropped it. VW is using the same playbook as Ford: move "upmarket" with progressively bigger, more expensive, models. Management says they don't care about volume or market share. Effectively, their plan is to make more profit, while doing less.
Maybe big oil bought the same plan from McKinsey? They are loath to invest in increased production, because the extra supply would only reduce prices.
there's no expectation that Trump is aiming to keep the Strait closed for beyond the very short term.Define "short term". Most "JCs" are old phartz, so their retirement, in only a handful of years, is the longest horizon they care about.
This chart shows how the invasion of Iraq throttled production. It took nearly 5 years for Iraqi production to return to the level it had been before the invasion. And, keep in mind production in 2000-02 was limited by sanctions. The speed with which Iraq produced the documentation of the destruction of their WMDs, and the fact that Saddam had recently signed new development contracts with several non-US oil companies, tells me they were about to apply to the UN for repeal of the sanctions, so Iraqi production could be increased even more. The invasion obstructed all that.
https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?country=iq&prod...Which is probably why the oil majors' stocks (like XOM and CVX and SHEL) are trading at around where they were right before the war started.Actually, they aren't. The XOM I added last January is up 28%. Not bad, for a few months hold. Trump constantly manipulates crude futures up and down by alternately threatening to bomb Iran into the stone age, then announcing "peace is at hand", for the umteenth time. There has been considerable chatter about crude futures activity suspiciously well timed to his pronouncements.
We can speculate all day. We may find out, when the books are published.
Steve
