They're probably hoping to emulate Norway + Statoil, which has made the Norwegian state extremely rich[1]. It didn't stop oil exploration in Norwegian waters, quite the opposite.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...

This is a complete misrepresentation, there's no reason to believe that Norway wouldn't be rich, possibly even richer, if Statoil never existed.

They might end up emulating a petrodictatorship instead, because it's an open question whether they have the state capacity, institutions, and most importantly a populism-proof electorate to achieve what Norway has, instead of the default "resource curse" option most other oil-rich countries fell into.

Its always a dictatorship when a global south country refuses to play extraction-ball that will need to be "liberated".

I'm rooting for them to remain democratic, just saying the resource curse[0] is not a concept made up by evil dastardly westerners to keep "global south" countries down. It seems to be the default path, sadly.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Chile is actually a pretty well run country with a First World GDP. Yes, their economy is heavily based on natural resources but so is Australia or Canada.

Saudi Arabia on the other hand is fabulously corrupt but they were still able to take over their oil industry (Aramco) without problems and even go upmarket in petrochemicals with SABIC.

It used to. Now it is another leftist enabled Supermarket Sweep season.

Norway learned from other Iraq and avoided both the resource curse and Dutch disease:

https://psmag.com/environment/iraqi-vikings-farouk-al-kasim-...

Of course Norway has strong democratic institutions Iraq didn’t, but so did the Netherlands.

Why would you put a company in charge of a system controlled by nepotism and corruption?

Because it is still profitable. Chile is one of the most stable Latinamerican countries.

So was Venezuela.

Was stable. Now it is the Monty Python Argument Clinic, constitutional version.

Stability and political counterweights.

Having a stable Chile as a source of resources to stack against other sources of resources may be worth the markup.

For the same reason oil and gas companies still explore and agree to contracts with landowners for access to the underground minerals; it's still profitable after paying the owner of the mineral their cut.

In a world where Santa Claus exists, sure.

But in the real world, once you nationalize a company, it's a matter of time before it becomes a magnet for corrupt politicians.

The only world in which I would be OK with nationalization is where politician had shock collars connected to a nepotism/corruption detection AI. And where even false positives of such AI were OK.