A very interesting Reuters article on how resource nationalism — countries nationalizing and controlling their domestic oil industries — is changing the way global oil markets respond to higher prices. After all, when you can revenue acceleration from a finite resource without increasing supply, why bother pumping more?  As the report notes:

“…Resource nationalism in oil producing countries is cordoning off valuable supplies and the United States has precious few options to battle the trend amid a looming supply crunch.

… international firms have found themselves faced with tougher terms and shut out of the globe’s most promising oil basins, a trend known as “resource nationalism.”

The United States — the world’s biggest oil consumer — stands mostly powerless as national oil companies like Venezuela’s PDVSA and Russia’s Gazprom block access to key oil reserves and demand a larger share of the profits in exchange for allowing international oil companies to drill.

…Conventional wisdom in past years has been that when oil prices rise high enough, oil companies will have the profit motive to spend the billions of dollars needed to bring new supply sources online.

But resource nationalism has turned such wisdom on its head, investment bank Goldman Sachs said in a recent report.

Resource nationalism “imposes significant policy constraints on the free flow of capital, labor and technology that are substantially limiting supply growth,” Goldman Sachs said in its report, which also called for benchmark U.S. oil prices to average $141 a barrel in the second half of 2008….”