Why bother investing at all when you can just buy back stock and make the owners/CEO rich[1]? If you think these companies are sinking their profits into investing for the future, you're dreaming.
1. As per BP's Q12022 reports, their capital expenditure was $2.9B compared to $1.6B of buybacks. Is that too much? Too little? I don't know. However, I do think your characterization is way too simplistic.
2. the boom-bust cycle is exactly the reason not to reinvest all the surplus profits now. You might intuitively think that investing now will help lower oil prices, but it takes years for an oil project to be online so by the time the project is complete there will be an oil glut.
2. the boom-bust cycle is exactly the reason not to reinvest all the surplus profits now. You might intuitively think that investing now will help lower oil prices, but it takes years for an oil project to be online so by the time the project is complete there will be an oil glut.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/business-sites/en/global/c...