Belt-tightening has been the policy of necessity in the oil industry over the past three years, and even the price recovery that began at the end of 2016 did not steer oil majors completely off their new frugal course. Shareholders, it seems, are more than happy about it. It might come as a surprise that the best-performing stock among large U.S. oil producers is ConocoPhillips. In the past 12 months, Conoco’s share price gained almost 30 percent as opposed to an almost 10-percent slide for Exxon. This, says the Wall Street Journal’s Bradley Olson, is proof that Conoco’s choice to pamper investors with dividends and stock buybacks instead of growing its business is the right one. Conoco began doing this before the 2014 price crash, interestingly enough. Starting in 2012, the company offloaded its refining operations and shut down its deepwater exploration unit, Olson recalls, as it sought to […]