About Countries Selling Their Natural Resources

[acropolis]

Or giving them away, as the case may be.

I don't know how the system works, I'll say that now. But we in America have a nice sized oil field under a pristine arctic wilderness in the middle of nowhere, and of late there has been pressure to lease it for drilling to relieve high oil prices.

But here's my thinking. Oil is selling for X dollars a barrel right now. If we lease those fields, I sincerely doubt any company would pay more than X dollars/barrel for the oil they pumped out. Which to me is bullshit.

Cause we know for a 'fact' that the price of oil is going to go up. To me it's like having a winning lotto ticket and then selling it for face value (less than face value actually). Okay, so maybe we don't know for a fact that oil prices will keep going up; it's possible some magic new energy source will pop up, and oil will immediately be worthless like tech stock circa august 2001. But in that scenario, we're fine. You're fine. Everybody's fine. I don't feel an urgent need to put it all on the line to prepare for that fearsome best-case scenario.

So, were I in charge I would hire some two-bit economists to predict the high-value for oil, and I wouldn't sell reserves for less than maybe 90% of that value.

This is where other people point out
A) Why I'm wrong
B) How governments should make use of their natural resources