Slade, if the strategic goal is to widen the ratio between your cost of industrial production and your opponent’s, and given the non-renewability of the resource, denying it to your opponent (or rationing it thru price) may be more profitable than selling it to him. Especially in the military power & control area. pay attention to the fact that the exporting nations are subsidizing their populace –ie, selling oil to their own industry 7 consumers based on its production costs, rather than the NYMEX spot crude price which we think of as ”the cost of oil”.