Part 6 – June 30, 2017
You will have noted that the title of the column this week has been changed from Oil and Gas – the new Economic Horizon. It comes from the banner headline of the Daily Chronicle of November 18, 1930 and is a reminder to us all that we need to start thinking oil and gas not only because of the benefits which can accrue to the country but also that there are in fact few countries which have made proper and responsible use of their oil endowment. We only have to think of the Dutch Disease, Resource Curse or Oil Curse, or think of Venezuela, the country with the highest reserves of crude oil in the world based on latest data, to recognise that oil is not a panacea. Indeed, oil countries are more than fairly represented in the list of most corrupt countries. So as we bear the topic in mind, we need to be ever conscious that oil then is neither a good indicator of a country’s economic wellbeing, its human capital or a measure of its governance.
Where does oil come from, how is it discovered, explored and extracted? Is there some pool of the