Hess: OPEC’s Back In The Driver’s Seat

Looking back a few short decades, the hallmark of America's enormous and prolonged upsurge globally was our forward-thinking posture, as highlighted by the typical Corporate CEO. America has always led in inventions, for instance and these largely drove not only innovation and the birth and development of whole new industries, but drove our expanding economy and prosperity
In the 40's and 50's, a new invention was used to develop new DOMESTIC industries as corporate America developed them to the fullest. Starting in the early 60's, corporate greed led to short-sightedness and companies increasingly turned over long-term CEO planning to the accountants for near-term quarterly reports to excite stockholders, and America sold or licensed our inventions to lower cost labor, to the extreme with a COMMUNIST nation that hates us. China Now, it's good that shareholders are seeing nice payouts for a change from our oil producers. But, just like a farmer would tell you, "It's rarely a good idea to consume your seed crop" as shareholder demands are currently exploiting. If we've learned nothing else this past year or so, it's that Fossil Fuels are FAR from done and "green" lacks dependability. And geo political issues can turn on a dime (See: Feb 24) and I think a lot of folks in many nations will agree to that in spades this winter, as they go broke trying to maintain survivable heat. We need to strike a balance, and Big Oil cannot and must not continue to cave to shareholder greed. A decent amount of these profits need to be plowed back into developing new wells, new resources. Lest we forget, even our Tax Code gives oil breaks because what they produce is a DEpreciating asset that must be continually replaced. And this is especially true since one man at our helm decided to place all of America at serious risk by depleting our Strategic Oil Reserve built slowly over decades, in less than a year, to save seats of his party in Congress and the Senate. This is the height of irresponsible, self-serving dangerous, miscalculations. Keep exploring and start drilling, fellas. You don't have to go crazy, because I also appreciate that the same man who depleted our own reserves and went hat in hand to our enemies (in some cases) to increase THEIR drilling and building pipelines, while he shots off leasing and drilling at home and kills our pipeline, and has thusly made nearly every energy decision during his short term in office, the WRONG ones for America, you must balance everything with not going overboard as he cannot be trusted to not throw Big Oil under the bus because of his hatred for it. BALANCE is the key. The pendulum has, as it often does, swung from one extreme (heavy drilling) to the other (paying out the lion's share to demanding shareholders. I am a significant shareholder, and I say, strike the balance, some payouts, but more drilling, while we still can and have strong markets. Time to let the CEO run things again, not the CFO who only looks short-term at the next Quarterly Earnings.

It is actually OPEC-Plus, which is first and foremost Saudi-Russian cooperation in energy markets. Had the West and Russia kept their partnership, the OPEC-Plus forum might not have materialized. If we observe the accompanying development of Sino-Russian, Sino-Saudi, and Sino-Russo-Iranian cooperation, and the alignment of Venezuela with Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran, we can see a global partnership developing across several issues and sectors.