John Rockefeller, the godfather of the modern oil industry, called his tactic of purposely crashing oil prices and sending the stocks of his rivals into a tailspin “a good sweating”.
Soon after, he’d conveniently buy shares cheaply. For the following century, one of the few certainties of petroleum investing was that low crude prices are bad for big oil.
That remained true until last year, when oil company shares rose while the cost of a barrel of crude plunged. For some investors, it marked the beginning of a new paradigm. I was never 100 per cent convinced, and now cracks are starting to appear: it doesn’t look like the sector can sustain its outperformance versus the commodity market.
Source: https://www.afr.com/markets/commodities/there-s-a-reason-big-oil-won-t-keep-beating-the-crude-market-20260114-p5nu42