
The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil - blasdel
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html
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wglb
Great story, particularly in regard to the balance required to make the whole
thing work, and to push the oil companies to innovate. It also brings to mind
the essay "There are no Mom and Pop Oil Companies in Norway":
[http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b3b24fb751...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b3b24fb7512f220f)

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jakewolf
I love people who fearlessly operate like this:

"After the Ekofisk find, he had to train new recruits. “I, of course, accepted
that I am teaching people so that they can make my existence unnecessary …
What choice did I have? I had only one hope, and that is that through my
contribution, I would become indispensable, which I did.”"

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terpua
“Not everything in life has been good – but things have mostly come in a
fortunate order. It’s got nothing to do with skill, it’s simply luck. Like the
idea to drop by the Department of Industry … it was just because I am the kind
of person who hates waiting.”

Most successful people contribute their success to luck - maybe that's why
they are so lucky.

~~~
lsc
Many successful people, when trying to be modest or polite will attribute much
of their success to luck. How much of that is modesty? I don't know, but in
this case, the guy is clearly being humble and letting the reporter talk him
up.

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einarvollset
Immigrants. What a nefarious source of evil to be scorned.

~~~
numair
There's a massive difference between the emigration of a very smart, talented
person who is eager to assimilate and contribute to society, and immigration
involving large numbers of people who are unskilled and have no intention of
becoming part of mainstream society in your country. (And I say this as an
immigrant)

~~~
michael_dorfman
I'm also an immigrant (to Norway, actually), and I can tell you that it's
quite difficult in practice to tell the difference-- it's not nearly as
"massive" as you think.

~~~
numair
I was in Oslo last week - there's large parts of town where it's quite easy to
tell the difference. Anyway, this isn't the right forum for this discussion...

~~~
laut
I read in a Norwegian newspaper that a part of Oslo "Grønland", there was a
guy who thought that Norwegians should follow certain muslim norms because
it's a muslim neighborhood. This was in response to some people that had been
assaulted in the neighborhood.

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bjelkeman-again
From the article: "It’s got nothing to do with skill, it’s simply luck. Like
the idea to drop by the Department of Industry … it was just because I am the
kind of person who hates waiting.”

IMHO people often attribute to luck what is in fact created by themselves.

On another note, Norway's oil production is now in sharp decline:

[http://www.norway.org/NR/rdonlyres/3AE52C92-D215-419D-8131-9...](http://www.norway.org/NR/rdonlyres/3AE52C92-D215-419D-8131-9A5A13FB1ACA/49868/productionncs1.gif)

[http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/a-decline-rate-
stud...](http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/a-decline-rate-study-of-
norwegian-oil-production/)

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miked
_Olsen gives al-Kasim much of the credit: he pushed the government to increase
extraction rates; insisted that companies try new technologies, such as water
injection in chalk reservoirs or horizontal drilling; and threatened to
withdraw operating licences from companies that balked. “It is this culture, a
culture of ‘squeezing the last drop out’, which he cultivated,” says Olsen._

As it stands, this makes no sense. If a cost-benefit analysis showed that
investing in technology to increase extraction efficiencies would pay off
(given the volatitlty of future prices, etc.), then it should have been done
regardless of his urgings. If it didn't, he should never have pushed the idea.
In the first case, StatOil would need new managers. In the second, the subject
of the story would be wrong.

You'd think that the editors of _The Financial Times_ would have pursued that
issue in a bit more depth.

~~~
furyg3
Pay off now, or pay off later?

The incentive structure for a CEO or other executive at a large multi-national
oil firm is likely such that he/she would much rather have a lot of oil
drilled in the short-term, rather than a smaller ammount of oil in the short-
term and a larger total ammount over the long-term. The same goes for the
board members and investors.

"Long-term" here is _decades_ , possibly _generations_ , not next quarter.
That means that a large chunk of the profits may be realized well after you're
retired (or dead), which is not so great for your bonus structure, promotion
schedule, or the ROI timeframes that most investors are concerned with (but
fantastic for a nation-state). Furthermore contract structures over that kind
of timeframe become a bit unpredictable, especially contracts with a sovreign
nation, so better to get what you can now and get out.

This kind of long-term thinking is where corporations fall short. Even if it's
the best interests of the 'corporation' to invest in the long term (which
clearly ended up being the case here), it's not in the best interests of the
individuals working there. Very few institutions are capable of that mode of
operation (nations, monarchies/family dynasties).

~~~
miked
While I largely agree on most of your points, I think there's a porblem with
this:

 _The incentive structure for a CEO or other executive at a large multi-
national oil firm is likely such that he/she would much rather have a lot of
oil drilled in the short-term, rather than a smaller ammount of oil in the
short-term and a larger total ammount over the long-term._

That seems to me a bit of a strawman, though I confess I know little about how
the oil business works. The issue here comes down to a present value
calculation for proposed investments. You seem to be implying that the Iraqi
engineer pushed for short-term maximization thru the use of new technologies.
But those technologies cost money, _now_. That would reduce the company's
profit and (if he's a shareholder) his (short-term) return.

~~~
Estragon

      I confess I know little about how the oil business works
    

So basically you're arguing from the axioms of free-market fundamentalism. \
_yawn\_

~~~
anamax
> So basically you're arguing from the axioms of free-market fundamentalism.

Since he was responding to an argument with even less basis, it's curious that
only the response rated the above comment.

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fhars
All I get from that link is a page not found error. Has the article been
pulled, or have ft.com tried and failed to provide a mobile version of their
site?

Or are they just filtering access to that page from norway where the servers
serving opera mini seem to be located, judging from the mislocalized adsense
stuff google tends to show me?

