The price of oil comes from NYMEX, not Exxon, and not Rosneft. Not really even from Saudi Aramco.
When the price was $0/barrel in early 2020, there was talk in the oil fields of shutting down. And counter talk about nationalizing the companies.
There has also been talk of nationalizing the companies when the price goes very high.
Neither scenario has triggered nationalization of Exxon or Chevron or Occidental Petroleum or Conoco or others . . . yet.
But make no mistake here — the vast majority of oil produced in the world comes from nationalized companies.
Rosneft (Russia), Equinor (Norway), Saudio Aramco, Pemex (Mexico), PetroBras (Brazil), PetroChina — all NOCs (National Oil Companies) and these dominate the industry, not the handful of remaining private companies like Exxon, Chevron, BP, Total, Royal Dutch Shell. Those are devolving into minor players.
The dirty little secret? It doesn’t matter if you are private or public. Oil is getting scarce. You can’t command oil to emerge from the ground at gunpoint if there is none there.
“Oil is getting scarce.”
Please elaborate. I read periodically of the discovery of new oil fields.
The top five oil-producing countries have known reserves of about one trillion barrels.
The world uses about 36 billion barrels a year. So we have…at current usage levels…about 28 years of reserves. Those five countries are Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, and Iraq. It does not even include the US, Mexico, Britain, Norway, Kuwait, and so forth.
It looks like we will be good for a while longer.
Oil will only be scarce if Governments won’t allow drilling