Oil investors are skeptical over the long-term viability of the industry, so they are demanding — and getting — massive payouts from the superlative-defying profits the industry reaped by exploiting the Russian war in Ukraine, Bloomberg reports. Shareholders of 26 U.S. oil companies raked in a $128 billion windfall in 2022 via stock buybacks and dividends. This represents the “first time in at least a decade, US drillers last year spent more on share buybacks and dividends than on capital projects,” according to Boomberg’s analysis. The change reflects growing investor unease about the long-term health of an industry that makes its billions selling the products mainly to blame for the global climate crisis, and a desire to cash in now instead of rewarding companies for long-term investments in future extraction that will become stranded assets in a carbon-constrained future. (Bloomberg $)