I want to address one of the more insightful questions that I have received about oil stock investing. It generally goes like this: Does the non-renewable nature of petro-carbons pose a significant risk to the long-term survival of oil majors like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Total SA, and ConocoPhillips?

This is a smart risk to consider. If you own an asset, and if you reinvest into it over the course of your lifetime, you should be fixated on the risk of whether there will be something leftover for you at the end of your compounding period. In the past, I have lamented the path of Wachovia investors who receive large chunks of dividend income in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s only to find it all collapse from $40 to $2 in the fall of 2008. All your years of compounding and delaying gratification didn’t mean squat because … Read the rest of this article!