Re:Norway Is Walking Away from Billions of Barrels of Oil
by cygx on Monday April 08, 2019 @03:34PM
(#19608321)
You know what also comes out like gold? Actual gold :p
As far as I'm aware, profit margins on iron aren't too shabby either, though I'd have to do some digging how this all shapes up in these specific cases (Norwegian oil vs Australian gold, iron and coal).
Re:Norway Is Walking Away from Billions of Barrels of Oil
by mises on Monday April 08, 2019 @07:10PM
(#19610055)
The difference is not just profit margins, but very different capex and opex. Capex on oil rigs is large (especially offshore), but opex is pretty reasonable. I would imagine iron mining has much higher opex. A better approach it may be to loot at the graphs of average fixed/variable/total cost, which are very different.
Statoil makes huge margins on their oil because once the tricky rig was set up, it just comes out like Gold.
Most other natural resources have much thinner margins due to processing, overhead.
'Sweet Crude' i.e. the kind you get in the desert, and 'sweet once it's setup to be' i.e. Statoil ... this is a different thing together from other natural resources.
Norway is like Kuwait, it's almost impossible to compare it to anything else.
They can leave the Oil in the ground for now because they are very rich and have more money than they know what to do with.