Driven5 said:.... Had they chosen to more aggressively return to max production, and/or made choices that allowed them to more aggressively return to max production, it would have at least shown them doing what is within their control to help mitigate inflation and it's economic impacts at the expense of cutting into their (record) profit margins.
Again, we can't know just how intentional vs unintentional the outcome of these choices were, but it's certainly not a great look.
See, now that is actually a reasonable argument. As you note, I don't know how much influence an uptick in US production would have on the global prices, but it would certainly be some (just the commitment to more production will do it). Of note is that OPEC produces 2-3 times as much as the US. The question would be: Would ramping up US production have enough of an affect on global prices to not give them an even larger boost in profits (in which case, they would be seen as even more "greedy")
Together, the OPEC members at the beginning of 2020 held about 71% of the world's total proved crude oil reserves, and the OPEC members in 2021 accounted for about 37% of total world crude oil production
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/where-our-oil-comes-from.php
I think the response from the US oil companies would be that the are being held back by US energy policy / regulation / environment that makes it difficult for them to ramp up production (e.g. providing plenty or oil drilling leases, but not approving production in them) and also makes it difficult to commit investments in a environment that seems to be very negative towards them (as can seen in this thread and many comment about eliminating oil companies by government types). Rather then help the US companies to improve production, the choice was made to make a deal with Venezuela (I fear to know what we "gave" them), so the money goes there (you might want to look and see who runs that country, not exactly an improvement over the Saudi government)
Of note, the chart shown above was a bit confusing to me. I had no idea Venezuela was such a huge player. That's because it really isn't. The above chart is oil RESERVES not production. Here is a chart of production, and as noted above OPEC is around 32 Mil/Bar/Day. Venezuela can be seen near the bottom of this (partial) list (about 1/18 of US production, but HUGE reserves for some reason). You can also see why removing Russia is such a big deal.
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/crude-oil-production
