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Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

I've been reading a lot about this, and I've been wondering the best way to buy a long term 'call' option on oil is... Ideally, I'd buy stock in an unhedged owner of the right to drill for oil in places where it's only profitable to drill if the price of oil goes up above where it is now.

I mean, I'm no 'peak oil' person or anything, I just don't trust that we went so quickly from the idea that we were running out of oil and that it would as a result become super expensive now to this idea that it won't be worth pulling oil out of the ground for much longer; I strongly suspect that the truth is between those two scenarios, and would like to lay some money on that suspicion.

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Danger! Energy demand and alternative energy supplies also affect price.

Oh certainly. I am just saying that right now, the estimated future value of oil is oscillating wildly, I think, more wildly than I think it ought. I would like to lay some money on that over, say, a ten year time span. Not enough to be a huge deal if I am wrong or that I never have to work again if I am right or anything, but I think it would be an interesting bet.

(Unlike many people, I don't think I am smarter than the market... But I do think I am less excitable and often have a longer time horizon. And yes, I know that I am probably just as wrong as the people who think they are smarter than the market.)

There is no such thing as 'peak oil' because we keep figuring out ways to find more.

Think Oil Sands: massive amounts of Oil in Alberta and Venezuela was not considered in reserves just a decade ago because it was not economically feasible to access it. Now it is. Deep Oil drilling, arctic exploration - so much changes so quickly. Heck - most wells are left with a lot of Oil in them because it cannot be extracted.

Of course eventually there will be such a thing as 'peak oil' but it's hard to determine.

My comment was just about how the normal peaks and troughs of oil prices seem to often be interpreted in permanent (often apocalypticly permanent) terms when history shows that oil is just a very volatile commodity.

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