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Comment by patrickk | Hacker News Reader

They're probably hoping to emulate Norway + Statoil, which has made the Norwegian state extremely rich[1]. It didn't stop oil exploration in Norwegian waters, quite the opposite.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feab...

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Norway learned from other Iraq and avoided both the resource curse and Dutch disease:

https://psmag.com/environment/iraqi-vikings-farouk-al-kasim-...

Of course Norway has strong democratic institutions Iraq didn’t, but so did the Netherlands.

They might end up emulating a petrodictatorship instead, because it's an open question whether they have the state capacity, institutions, and most importantly a populism-proof electorate to achieve what Norway has, instead of the default "resource curse" option most other oil-rich countries fell into.

Chile is actually a pretty well run country with a First World GDP. Yes, their economy is heavily based on natural resources but so is Australia or Canada.

Saudi Arabia on the other hand is fabulously corrupt but they were still able to take over their oil industry (Aramco) without problems and even go upmarket in petrochemicals with SABIC.

It used to. Now it is another leftist enabled Supermarket Sweep season.

Its always a dictatorship when a global south country refuses to play extraction-ball that will need to be "liberated".

I'm rooting for them to remain democratic, just saying the resource curse[0] is not a concept made up by evil dastardly westerners to keep "global south" countries down. It seems to be the default path, sadly.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Why would you put a company in charge of a system controlled by nepotism and corruption?

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