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> Yet more TYPICAL US REVISIONISM. Once again they DENY the role that the UK has played in international history - this time OMITTING it, NEEDLESSLY, from the l
by saryant 12y ago
> Yet more TYPICAL US REVISIONISM. Once again they DENY the role that the UK has played in international history - this time OMITTING it, NEEDLESSLY, from the list of profligate petrostates.
Are you mad that Slate didn't mention the UK, or mad that they didn't call them profligate?
- to3m 12y agoBoth, of course. People always assume it's developing/Middle Eastern/BRICS-style states that have the monopoly on pissing away their oil bounty, by taking the revenues and spending them rather than investing them - but it's not so, damnit! (As I understand it, since the UK was never part of OPEC, nor restricted by any self-imposed quota a la pre-peak USA, private companies were allowed to produce as much oil as they could. This meant working through the available resources as quickly as possible, with the resulting excess holding down the prices they were sold at. (The UK - and Norway - were at one point major oil producers.) All in all, not very strategic - though the UK always seemed to do very poorly as a command economy, so, even in retrospect, probably not the wrong thing.)
- saryant 12y agoActually, the UK half-heartedly considered joining OPEC at one point.
- justincormack 12y agoI don't think that the UK producing excess oil was a significant factor in keeping the oil price down; peak production was in 1985, when prices were falling due to excess production (and large falls in demand) but Russia was a far bigger producer. The money was not invested it is true, but not producing it at that point (given the large investments) would probably not have been optimal either.