The Oil Drum

44 comments on Understanding the oil patch

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AngryChimp on November 19, 2005 - 4:18am

Ya the men who own these companies, like the Rockefellers, are really nice guys like you and me. The never all meet up and decide to start wars where thousands of innocent people are slaughtered just to keep expanding. Great people...

Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney
http://tinyurl.com/dzjfo

If anyone wants to get a real look at how the world runs instead, of the "Bambi" version, check out "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". You won't be disappointed. He explains exactly how "people who work in these companies tend to be extremely normal" are manipulated by incentives to expand these international companies at all cost. And yes we are all to blame...

http://tinyurl.com/duh5o

==AC

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Bubba on November 19, 2005 - 11:02am

I am not saying that I understand the whole truth. I am only trying to give the readers of TOD a peek from inside these companies. I know some of the people who are at the top of these companies. They are insecure, very fallible, and not in control of a whole lot. The vast majority of these people started out as technocrats (geoscientists or petroleum engineers). I guess it is conceivable that as some point in their rise through the bureaucracy they were given the key to the inner sanctum and taught the secret handshake. It just seems implausible to me.

If they were in more control, then they wouldn't have gone through the last 20 years canabalizing themselves. In the 1960's the major multinational oil companies controlled upwards of 50% of the world's oil production. Now, depending upon how many companies you include, they control 10% to 16% of this production.

I am reminded of a quote that Lee Iacocca made after he left Chrysler. I don't have the exact quote but I will try to paraphrase:

"Picture an ant on the top of a log racing down a flooded river. That ant thinks he is steering that log. Now replace your visual image of the ant and the log with a bean counter trying to manage a company like Chrysler."

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jkissing on November 19, 2005 - 1:11pm

Great topic. Why would we think the overpaid ceo's of the oil companies are any smarter than their counterparts running the US auto companies for the last 30 years? What did they learn from the last oil crisis in the seventies, when gm tanked, and ford very nearly went under, with their stock falling to $1? If you're too dumb to see the future, why can't you at least see the past?
I especially liked the deer munching corn as the semi crests the rise.