They’re making record profits, but oil companies still won’t ‘drill, baby, drill’

They’re making record profits, but oil companies still won’t ‘drill, baby, drill’Over the last two weeks, oil companies have announced eye-popping profits from the spring quarter. Similarly, even as the administration has opened up U.S. federal lands for drilling, companies have shown only a lukewarm response. If the U.S.-Israel war with Iran had occurred in 2012, oil companies might have seen the price spike as a chance to drill more wells. In the last five years, as investors soured on drill-happy oil companies, they embraced a new, more disciplined approach to capital expenditure. In an ironic twist, oil companies have benefited more from constraints on global oil production than from “unleashing” it.