Exxon Mobil’s stock hit a record high on Tuesday — a feat it hadn’t achieved in more than a year — as Wall Street seems to have discounted President Donald Trump’s criticism of the oil giant and its chief executive.
Shares rose 2% to $126.54; the all-time closing high was the first for Exxon Mobil’s stock since Oct. 7, 2024, when it closed at $125.37. The stock has gained in three of the past four sessions, faltering slightly on Monday right after Trump’s comments.
Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods candidly called Venezuela “uninvestable” at a White House meeting on Friday, leading Trump on Sunday to threaten to cut the company out of any oil deals in Venezuela.
Trump may not have liked Woods’s tone on Venezuela, but there’s a list of other factors Wall Street loves about Exxon.
The company has earned praise from analysts for its steadiness, its ability to draw profit from all aspects of the energy industry, and its enviable exploration and production footprint — which includes West Texas’s Permian Basin and, next door to Venezuela, Guyana, where it has emerged as a key player.
Guyana has become a “significant contributor to growth” in global oil supplies in just a few short years, according to the Energy Information Administraton, thanks in large part to Exxon Mobil’s investments.
And as crude-oil futures hover below $65 a barrel, there’s very little incentive for Exxon and perhaps other integrated oil companies to vie for any possible riches in Venezuela, where there are more questions than answers at the moment.
Until investors have confidence in long-term political continuity in that country, “capital will remain cautious, incremental, and conditional,” said Baron Lamarre, a former head of trading at Malaysia’s state-owned oil company Petronas.
Trump reportedly wants crude oil to drop to $50 a barrel, a level that many in the energy industry consider far too low to be sustainable and one that could be at odds with the interests of U.S. crude-oil producers, even smaller ones.
Exxon and ConocoPhillips exited Venezuela after waves of expropriations that started under then-President Hugo Chávez in the 2000s and continued under Nicolás Maduro, who is now in American custody after a U.S. military operation on Jan. 3. Chevron has remained in the country.
Trump has said the U.S. would invest $100 billion in Venezuela, and that plenty of energy companies are lining up to be part of that effort. The president also told executives that their companies would have U.S. security guarantees when operating in Venezuela, without elaborating.
At the meeting Friday, Woods also said that oil companies need to have “durable protections” for their investments and to see changes in Venezuela’s laws governing hydrocarbons.
In the short term, he said Exxon Mobil had committed to sending a technical team to assess the situation, and that the company is willing to assist with bringing Venezuelan crude to the market.