Political Peak Oil

One thing stands in the way of secure and abundant supplies of oil: Government

Ronald Bailey | January 5, 2007

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Besides the ones mentioned above, the list of corrupt oil producing countries is nearly endless--Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Angola, Libya--and that’s just in Africa. If an “oil crisis” fails to materialize, it will be because nimble private oil companies will have succeeded in boosting production capacity in enough places around the world that temporarily losing one or two major producers to incompetence or malice won’t matter much. But the sad fact is that the world’s energy security would be a lot greater if more of the world’s oil and gas resources were in the hands of private companies.

Disclosure: Yes, yes, yes. I still own 50 shares of ExxonMobil. And yes, ExxonMobil has been a contributor to the Reason Foundation. So go ahead and take everything I’ve written above with a grain of salt—it doesn’t matter because the reporting is still as true and as accurate as I can make it.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.

Comments

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