Liam Denning, Columnist

Buffett Could Simply Say He’s Betting Oil Prices Go Up

Praising Occidental’s voluminous production and contribution to energy security simply reminds investors of the industry’s decade of excess.

February 27, 2024 at 11:00 AM UTC

By Liam Denning

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Road ahead.
Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America

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Not to say Warren Buffett’s folksy observation this weekend on the US oil business is incorrect, but it gets something awfully incorrect:

He is referring to Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum Corp., the oil and gas producer in which Berkshire Hathaway Inc. owns a roughly 28% stake. The dispute here isn’t with Hollub’s knowledge of oil production or that this constitutes a talent. Rather, it’s the “uncommon” aspect. The history of the US shale boom, including how Buffett and Berkshire got mixed up with Hollub and Oxy, shows how widespread this particular talent is. It was the skill of turning that into profits for investors that eluded most.