Oil, black crude, has been the engine of the industrial revolution since its discovery and the discovery of the many uses of oil. Like Uncle Jeb from the Beverly Hills, there’s oil in them thar hills there is. Oil has made many people very, very wealthy. The trouble is that someday we will run out of it, and in the meantime we should realize that while it lasts society should not close its eyes to the fact that oil is a finite resource and prepare for the future. Yes, I know that will require a plan. No one seems to want to think about the future and develop a plan but one country has, and that is Norway.

Norway is a country of a little over 5 million people. The land of the Vikings has a plan and now they have the largest national pension fund in the world for their people. The Norwegian pension is funded from taxing the oil that comes from their continental shelf, the waters of the North Sea. The fund has 815 billion dollars, yes that is billion with a b, not millions but billions with the amount getting close to a trillion dollars. Each Norwegian is on paper a millionaire. Their oil money funds their state budget, they invest in the stock markets of the world. My friends they have a plan that is working for their people.

We won’t be around to see any new oil developed from natures wondrous way of producing oil. Norwegians are smart to prepare for the future and in the process insure a stable financial future for their citizens. They even have a policy of only investing in companies that they consider to be ethical.

America needs to wake up and take advantage of the financial boon that black crude produces by taxing at a greater rater the oil that comes out of the ground and from under the Gulf of Mexico. We need a national well head tax.

Let’s not take pity on the poor oil companies, and the oil barons who run them. We are told that we as a nation produced 9 million barrels a day last year. Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow citizens, they are making money and a lot of it. It used to be a high risk business where many wells that were drilled were dry but technology being what it is now, most of the wells drilled in the United States and in our ocean waters and continental shelf yield black gold, just the kind that made Uncle Jed from the Beverly Hillbillies a millionaire.

And you thought that we can’t afford to build anything in America anymore!!!! We can have an even bigger Trust Fund than Norway, a government pension for we the people. The time to start is now.