Don’t Sell Your Oil Stocks II August 16, 2005March 2, 2017 NTMD I’m told that IMS, the service everyone uses to track prescriptions and new drug launches, is estimating that the weekly prescriptions for BiDil have been as follows: 4 49 103 147 (last week) The business builds! With a sales force of 200 and a revolutionary drug (for which a generic equivalent is available at one-sixth the cost), it would now appear that 303 patients are on the pill (4+49+103+147). What we don’t know yet is how many of them will have those prescriptions honored by their insurers, and how many will be switched to the generic alternative. Priced at $20.48 last night, the company is valued at over $600 million . . . or $2 million per prescription so far, though it’s only been a month. Don’t sell your puts just yet. DON’T SELL YOUR OIL STOCKS, EITHER Click here. ‘There’s no spare capacity left,’ opines Kevin Drum, ‘and there never will be again. This means that we’re now living in a different world. I’m not sure what all the ramifications of this are, but one thing is pretty certain: the next oil shock – and there will be one eventually – is going to be worse than any previous shock. Fasten your seat belts.’ And here. In part: Now – if we make the assumption that the higher end estimates of Iraqi oil reserves are correct, how does Daniel Yergin’s statement that Iraq is the “Greatest Prize of All” look? With over 25% of the world’s remaining oil, and a much lower depletion rate than that of Saudi Arabia (thanks to 15 years of sanctions and war following the historical efforts to keep Iraqi production low), I guess its not such a far-fetched statement. If we assign an average value of US$100 a barrel to this oil, you could say that this treasure is worth around $30 trillion dollars – which makes the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent by the US occupying the country a little more understandable. And of course, as we follow the path down Hubbert’s Peak the strategic value of this oil is immense. One of the problems with Iraq’s (and Kuwait’s, and Saudi Arabia’s for that matter) oil is that it mostly gets shipped out through the Persian Gulf, from where it is easier and cheaper for it to head onwards to India or China than the West. This presents something of a problem as depletion proceeds and the world becomes ever more dependent on this oil (assuming we don’t make the much wiser choice of moving on to renewables and other alternatives as rapidly as possible, of course). ☞ Could that $30 trillion prize be the reason we ignored Bin Laden when the oilmen took over the White House . . . despite urgent CIA warnings direct to Bush and Cheney at Blair House thirteen days before the Inauguration that Bin Laden represented a ‘tremendous’ ‘immediate’ threat to the United States? Could it be why – instead – we concentrated on Iraq . . . as can be seen from the agenda items of the first National Security Council meeting February 1, ten days after the Inauguration?