I went to a talk toady at the Open Society Institute put on by Revenue Watch. Peter Maass (pictured) wrote and spoke about his book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.
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He gave a great discussion and he had a deep knowledge of the topic. It was about a few things. First, how Oil, as a resource, is not great for a country - but instead fosters a lot of trouble, skews production inside a country and increases corruption.
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There are about 3 exceptions to this general rule.
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1. The USA where oil resource ownership is NOT controlled by the government because we found oil first. So our resource wealth has been a lot more spread out and not controlled by the government.
2. Norway (and to a lesser extent, Canada and Great Britain) where Democratic Institutions were already in place before oil was found.
3. Kuwait, UAE and Brunei, where the massive amounts of oil versus the small size of the public allows for the state to provide services even when corruption occurs.
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He also spoke of the many countries where oil wealth has been terrible for the people, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Russia, etc. And what the impacts of oil wealth have been on the people.
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Anyway, it was really interesting and Peter Maass was cool. The book is written about people not institutions.