I unterstand where a lot of you are coming from on how you feel about stock buybacks and If I had my way XOM would take all the money they have for buybacks and add all the dividends they will pay out together and divide by two. Half would go for buybacks and half for dividends.

However I also unterstand where they are coming from in the way they think since they have very little debt and you can only put so much money in exploration(finding new oil) and bring on line so much new oil and gas to market ever year with the personal they have so the question is what to do with all that other money? If they raise the dividend by a dollar a quarter then they are commited to paying it every year where as with stock buybacks they can be raised or lowered as the amount of money made each year comes in.  They feel like buybacks are the best way of investing extra cash as in the long run they will pay out less dividends so will feel safer increasing their dividends on the shares outstanding now.

  This June's dividend is one of their largest increases in a long time so I hope and think we may be seeing the fruits of the buyback program. Now if you figure how much the dividend is on that share I bought in 1965 its not bad at all! 

As far as oil stock dividends go I still like Chevron(CVX) and Shell's(RDS.A) way of paying more dividends and less buyback of stock. Seems to me to be the best of both worlds!

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