93 comments on World Oil Exports [01] Angola
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93 comments on World Oil Exports [01] Angola
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Very top of the article:
In my opinion, this growth rate is just plain reckless, and it is doubtful the Angolans, as history has exhibited in many other African countries, will spend that newfound oil money on sustainable economic policies. This new oil money will just fuel internal consumption for food exports and modern goods ect, and result in more and more modern lives that will be born dependent upon fossil fuels for their livelihoods. It is akin to yeast in a jar getting a boost in their growth medium, which will result in an intensification of the overshoot/die-off cycle. In my opinion we should be questioning growth as being something universally good for societies, and seeing it as something that will make us more dependent upon a system relying on increasing complexity and depleting fossil fuels to solve its problems. Increasing complexity, like the transition from horses to cars for transportations requires exponentially more infrastructure to implement and as will some green fantasy to ultra high tech hybrid cars which requires even more infrastructure. Few people seem to think of this background issue which is exponentially increasing dependencies on infrastructure to accomplish our the same simple task which requires exponentially more energy. The net energy cliff is on us in my opinion and a technological fix will further exacerbate our decent, a fundamental change in socialization is what we need similar to what Jeff Vail speaks of. That's why I don't see a 30% growth in GDP based on it's people making it a golden part of Africa, long term, but setting it up for a tremendous amount of difficulties.
Read Joseph Tainter's, The Collapse of Complex Societies, It explains this issue in greater detail
-Crews
That was a good one. Check the GDP growth rate here. I don't know how the 30% figure ended there.
haha yes, that would mean angolas GDP would double every 2 years, looked kinda funny too me. Thanks
They should get Norwegian advisors. (No, not the oil fund, the intersting part is that they did not let the oil incomes ruin the rest of their economy and invests in long lasting infrastrucure and knowledge. )
They should get non-corrupt politicians and civil servants + working judiciary and police system. Besides, Norwegian Oil & Energy Company Norsk-Hydro of Norway has already been accused of corruption in Angola, so I doubt that advice from would help a lot.
Advice doesn't help, when politicians and oil company figures can get away with corruption routinely. Those guys already have the best advise: embezzle the money, put it in an account of a money laundering bank on Jersey and with the leftovers fund expansions in oil production, so you can steal more the next year.
Angola was at rank 147 out of 179 countries in the Transparency international 2007 Corruption Index rankings. If you think corruption in China is bad, it ranks at 70.
Global Witness wrote a whole report on corruption in Oil & Gas industry (both NOC and IOC) and it's a sad read (2004). CorpWatch also details how Angola oil deals are opaque and often involve shady arms deals that break various laws and regulations.
And as has been written in another thread, it is really difficult to fight corruption, when western banks work in collusion with the corrupt politicians. Banks in Switzerland and Jersey have been guilty of this and the practice continues.
On top of this, western investors are fighting over the rights to pour money into oil investments in Angola, usually caring very little for laws or ethics. The practice is easy, because World Bank has rated Angola as one of the most difficult places to do business, due to rampant cronyism and corruption.
What about the people? 70% of them live in abject absolute poverty (less than $1/day) and the rest who are not corrupt, mostly in very poor conditions. Oil sector is responsible for destroying much of the livelihood of fishermen in Cabinda, one of the poorest provinces.
It has been said many times and tons has been written about it, but let's say it again:
African oil producing nations are very unlikely to get out of poverty, until IOCs clean up their act, foreign banks stop laundering embezzled money, US/Switzerland/China/etc stop selling them arms and everybody imposes strict requirements on the government from the outside (trade/development/etc). It would probably take another 10 years to flush the system even semi-clean, but the lure of black gold is impossible to resist.