SH,
We produce 5MM BOPD and consume 21MM BOPD. How will nationalizing oil companies help? What would the nationalized company do better, or differently? Would you compensate all the retirement funds which own stock?
There are hundreds of oil companies in the US. Many are very small. Are you going to nationalize them all?
How will you compensate the employees? Let's say I'm an expat working as a petroleum engineer for Exxon in Russia at $300K per year plus benefits. Are you going to try to cut my pay? Let's say the reason the Russians have granted Exxon an interest in the field is because they believe Exxon can develop it a lot better than someone else. Do you think the Russians will continue doing business with the nationalized company? If they do what control do you think the US government has over the sale of the oil? Let's assume they currently sell it in Europe and give Exxon their share of the proceeds. (I'll tell you it would be crazy to try to do anything else.) I'll bet that expat goes to work for British Petroleum or Shell.
What will you do about the operations of foreign companies in the US?
The mentality of many oil people (in E&P) is different from government employees. How will the government do joint ventures with the Russians, or the Chinese or whomever has these fields in some godforsaken place? (This is where the real money is.)
One of the most valuable assets of our oil industry is the superior technical expertise. What will the comp packages look like in thirty years? Do you think kids will be lining up to go into that industry?
One of the reasons Exxon is a premier company is that they get real smart people - not just oil people but computer people, secretaries, lawyers, accountants, and more. Will the government outbid General Electric for good accountants and lawyers? If not do you think that in thirty years Exxon will get the premium concessions from some dictator with a lot of oil which is tough to develop properly?
This stuff sounds to me about like nationalizing the Australian movie-making business so Mel Gibson and Nicole Kidman and so forth would make movies in Sydney instead of Hollywood. It wouldn't do much to create Australian movies. Mel Gibson wouldn't make Australian movies. He'd probably say "**** you". If he did he'd have to do it without lots of Hollywood people who are key. Australian bureaucrats would screw everything up. And they'd still want to buy Hollywood movies.
The bulk of "Big Oil"s value is in overseas concessions and people. I don't know how you really nationalize that.
Oh yeah, are you going to nationalize convenience stores which sell gas?