[cornellwright]

I think the issue that this and a few other comments have is that by "self-liquidation strategy" the author doesn't literally mean sell every company asset as quickly as possible. It means recognize that the market for petroleum is going to decline and mostly go away before the OPEC states have all depleted their reserves. Therefore, BP et al should not invest in finding more reserves, and instead just focus on extracting all the money they can from what they have.

Note I'm not taking a stance on whether or not the author is right, but I think that if he is, there are enough players to prevent price gouging, and if anything we'd see prices fall due to no one wanting to be left with stranded assets.