Who Owns the World’s Oil? Government.
Read full Wall Street Journal article here.
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This chart says it all. Oil is controlled by governments.
I used to think Exxon was huge. All the protesters told us it was huge. Actually it is relatively tiny.
Look at the list of governments that own oil reserves and compare their degree of freedom. Numerous studies from development economics have found that abundant natural resources often allows repressive regimes to ignore their economy because they have a ready source of funds other than taxes.
Devon, it’s called the curse of natural resource wealth.
This table gives a whole new meaning to the term “big oil.”
What does the “curse” imply?
That countries with relatively few natural resources have more economic growth because it’s harder for first movers to take over and extract serious profits? Or that profits are distributed more equally and thus create incentives for everyone to work?
I wonder if there are some other social analogies that we can draw: It’s always the “not-so-handsome” guys that do well after high school. They have to work harder to be successful. Whereas those that had things handed to them do not learn to make their own success.
Just an idea. Although I don’t think it completely captures the essence of the argument, it’s an interesting thought.
Curse: instead of normal development (e.g., like Hong Kong), the existence of one valuable resource creates enormous corruption and bad government which then makes it impossible for normal development to occur.