Comment by atburrow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atburrow | Hacker News Reader

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There is a potential flaw I spot in this piece. The author likens the self-liquidation strategy to what the big tobacco companies did. The problem I see with this is that tobacco is a luxury item. For many, oil is an every day necessity.

This leads into the liquidation issue. If companies such as BP were to liquidate, what would happen? The author mentions that non-oil countries should focus on providing resources and knowledge on oil extraction, but would that be enough to prevent price gouging? If there are no competitors selling oil, I could see the prices skyrocketing once the competition has liquidated all of their reserves. Would our knowledge, tools and "know how" be enough to prevent a monopoly on oil? Our only fallback would be to charge more on the services the author suggested we offer instead of oil.

I think the issue that this and a few other comments have is that by "self-liquidation strategy" the author doesn't literally mean sell every company asset as quickly as possible. It means recognize that the market for petroleum is going to decline and mostly go away before the OPEC states have all depleted their reserves. Therefore, BP et al should not invest in finding more reserves, and instead just focus on extracting all the money they can from what they have.

Note I'm not taking a stance on whether or not the author is right, but I think that if he is, there are enough players to prevent price gouging, and if anything we'd see prices fall due to no one wanting to be left with stranded assets.

If I were to stereotype smokers I wouldn't call the a group of luxury item buyers. I know tobacco isn't a necessity but the anacedata point from me would be that poverty and tobacco use are closely correlated.

Luxury traditionally means "optional" in this context. People can generally live and work without tobacco. Industrialized countries currently require oil, although this is changing.

Industrialized countries will require oil for a long time yet but it does seem that it is in the process of losing its special status as a lynchpin commodity and turning into "just another commodity" like aluminum or iron ore.

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