Petroleum to the people

Abstract

Oil booms poison the prospects for development in poor countries. Over the next ten years, new technologies will allow oil producers to extract billions of barrels of exportable oil from the East African Rift Valley and offshore in West Africa's Gulf of Guinea. Oil is not new to the Gulf of Guinea. At the heart of the resource curse lie weak institutions that fail to prevent public officials from exercising discretion over the revenue from oil and other external rents. The oil to cash approach has been engineered by a team of scholars at the center for global development, who contend that it attacks the fundamental causes of the resource curse. To many, the concept of direct cash transfers of oil dollars seems like a well-intentioned but utterly infeasible option. Nobody knows exactly how much oil will be pulled from the ground of Africa's new oil exporters over the next decade.

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