The strategery behind multinational corporations owning oil reserves is to deny any control over that resource to benefit we the people.

Why would Canada let Chinese multinational corporations buy into it's tar sands oil reserrve?

Because once those oil reserves are partially owned by a foreign corporation the right to regulate the exploitation of those resources passes from government of, by, and for we the people..to corporate boardrooms.

The corporations of each nation "trade" the rights to each other's resouces in order to disenfranchise those pesky governments that are owned by citizens.

Creating a world in which every nation is run like the neo-conservative (liberal and moderate neis are all alike) paradigm, Saudi Arabia!

Yep jd, we are trying to sound a wake up call!  Dave says..go back to sleep, let the people who know best run worldwide energy policy.  

This is the best of all possible worlds, because it's the only possible world.

Cyber personalities morphing?

Dave's right that the problem is oil, not where it comes from.  Of course, I don't think he means what I do, which is that the problem is that people drill, transport, refine, and burn oil, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt unless he states otherwise.

Perhaps you're right, but I'm just not clear how that would work.

I'm convinced that as oil becomes less freely available, it will be treated as a strategic national resource -- not a commodity.

What does this mean, exactly? Right now (simplifying things, obviously), a country with oil faces the question: How much is this oil worth? If they are offered $60 a barrel and say No, it's because they've decided that they need the oil more than they need the $60. Perhaps they would accept $70.

Perhaps some day they won't accept anything under $200. But do you think there's ever a time that they just won't sell it, period?

Maybe you think there's a time when they just won't sell it to us, period (or won't sell it to us at the same price they sell it to others). So, okay, maybe they'll sell it to India instead. India marks it up $10 a barrel and sells it to us. Once it's out on the world market, eventually willing buyers will find willing sellers.

Perhaps, theoretically, there could be a vast coalition of oil-producing and oil-consuming countries, all of which agree not to let the U.S. get any of it. But that seems far-fetched to me, and nothing in what you or the Oil Drum has said paints a picture of how it could happen.

I'm all ears, though.

www.grist.org

my title-only comment probably left you to guess at my meaning.  I only intended the rather simple reminder that "foreign oil" reminds you were most of it comes from.  you can respond to that, where it comes from, in a variety of ways.

it did strike me as funny that a site that worries about a "100 mile diet" wouldn't worry about "10,000 mile oil ... but maybe that's just me."