ConocoPhillips workers in Oklahoma, Texas and elsewhere can rejoice at the end of the year knowing the company they work for is the only one in Standard and Poor’s 500 Energy Index that posted a year-to-date gain.
Through Monday’s close, ConocoPhillips was up 3.9 percent for the year. But the other 29 members of the index were in negative territory. As Bloomberg News reported, the gauge dropped 25 percent in 2018.
The tumble in crude prices in the past several weeks is largely to blame, but even before the slump, energy was an unloved sector.
Conoco is doing its best to curry favor with investors wary of the industry’s reputation for overspending and poor returns. Earlier this month, the company said it planned to buy back $3 billion of shares in 2019, bringing investor payouts, including dividends, to half its cash from operations if oil averages $50 a barrel (although Brent dipped below $50 on Wednesday for the first time since July 2017).