Fighting the resource curse

This article is part of Executive’s special report on the oil and gas sector. Read more stories as they’re published here, or pick up October’s issue at newsstands in Lebanon.   “Ten years from now, 20 years from now, you will see: oil will bring us ruin … Oil is the Devil’s excrement.” This statement from Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, an OPEC founder, illustrates a common phenomenon linked to the discovery of hydrocarbon resources, coined the ‘resource curse’. In a nutshell, this concept links the increased exploitation and reliance on natural resources with the systematic decline in other economic sectors, specifically agriculture and manufacturing. The economy will be geared toward one sector which absorbs all the resources, labor and attention of policymakers, which would eventually reduce investments in other sectors of the economy. These symptoms are even more dangerous in countries with poorly run and corrupt institutions, non-democratic regimes and weak