> If the state took control of all oil revenues No. Norway's oil fund is the surplus from oil taxes and exploration licences. Doesn't need 100% nationalisation

> If the state took control of all oil revenues No. Norway's oil fund is the surplus from oil taxes and exploration licences. Doesn't need 100% nationalisation, Venezuela or a command and control Supreme Soviet. The UK Energy Minister proposed a national fund in the sixties, the Treasury agreed, but he was overruled by Cabinet. The remnants of the British National Oil Corporation that was going to be responsible for licences and supply was sold off at huge discount as BritOil in the depth of a recession (now part of BP). > Picking one after the fact that did well Or we could simply look at what the UK actually did with the oil dividend. Then conclude that anything else would have been better for the UK. A national fund with zero growth or investment. A fund that makes a 20% loss every year. Simply spend it all on modernising infrastructure every year. Better still, a national fund with a conservative growth strategy. Ideally split between a global fund (the $1.1tn) and a national fund, as the Norwegians did. Per capita not nearly as much as Norway's $200k each certainly, but $20k per person is hardly chicken feed. Whatever, we'd be far better placed for what comes after the oil. Or have $1.2tn+ to decarbonise the whole economy. Or take some of the load off funding state pensions into the future, with an ageing society... The USA could have achieved a phenomenal fund over the far longer period of US extraction - started in what, the 1890s, who knows what absurd valuation could have been achieved by now. Or the benefits that would bring to pensions or infrastructure.