Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unique. As oil prices hit record levels, multinationals are hunting for black gold in ever more unlikely places, and many Southeast Asian nations now are eagerly exploring new fields. Yet few seem to realize that rather than miracles, oil often brings misery, including the massive graft witnessed in some petroleum-rich African and Middle Eastern states...
...years ago, with a barrel of oil dipping to about $10, there was little interest in Southeast Asian petroleum, other than established deposits in Indonesia and Brunei. But now, global instability and rising demand from India and China have spiked oil prices to over $80 per barrel, and governments are nationalizing major fields from Russia to Venezuela. At the same time, as offshore technology improves, oil firms can hunt in deeper, tougher waters, like the Timor Gap between Australia and East Timor. So the region has exploded with oil fever. Vietnam plans to explore in seven offshore blocks, Malaysia this...
...lead to the "resource curse" - a government-connected élite profits, most people still suffer, and the economy winds up dependent on petroleum and facing inflation from rising oil revenues. Nigeria, for example, ranks in the top 10 of world oil exporters, yet 60% of Nigerians live below the poverty line, and the country's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said that the government has stolen or wasted some $400 billion, a fair share of which presumably came from...
...health care per person of any government on the planet. Hiding out in its new jungle capital Naypyidaw, the junta has not even suggested that oil money will benefit its people. While many oil companies support the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which pushes countries to explain how they spend petroleum money, Chinese oil giants, dominant in Burma, refuse to sign up. Even Brunei, a country that at least used decades of petroleum wealth to provide free health care, is not immune. Suckled on oil, Bruneians demonstrate minimal entrepreneurship, leaving the country with almost no industry when oil runs out, possibly...
...foreign subjugation, then bringing them home to the motherland, has become an important show of status. Like endowing a university or hospital, it wins official gratitude. But more deliciously, it can make headlines as the world oohs and ahs over sums spent. In 2006, Hong Kong petroleum executive Alice Cheng paid $19.4 million for a prized decorated bowl, shattering the previous world record for Qing dynasty porcelain. In late September, Macau gaming tycoon Stanley Ho spent $8.9 million on a bronze horse head looted by British and French troops from Beijing's old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan...