Re: [biofuels-biz] Striking It Poor: Oil as a Curse
Can someone give me the details or web site about Peugeot racing with biodiesel which was in an earlier posting? Does anybody know about documented evidence supporting non-esterifacation biodiesel? - Original Message - From: Keith Addison [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@yahoogroups.com Cc: biofuels-biz@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 6:07 PM Subject: [biofuels-biz] Striking It Poor: Oil as a Curse http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/arts/07BANK.html?pagewanted=printposition= June 7, 2003 Striking It Poor: Oil as a Curse By DAPHNE EVIATAR The pipes are already laid in southern Chad, where they snake south underground through tropical forests from the oil fields of Doba to a marine terminal off the coast of neighboring Cameroon. At the port of Kribi, the 660-mile pipeline will empty up to 250,000 barrels a day of coveted crude into tankers waiting to transport the unctuous black gold to Western markets. The largest energy infrastructure development in Africa, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline is to begin operation later this year. Built by a consortium of oil companies led by Exxon Mobil, it is expected to provide average annual revenue of $50 million. The World Bank Group has invested more than $180 million in the project, insisting that the pipeline's profits could significantly improve the lives of Chad's residents, most now living in squalor, by paying for services like health care, education, paved roads, electricity and sewer systems. Many critics find that assessment surprising, given that scholarly studies for more than a decade have consistently warned of what is known as the resource curse: that developing countries whose economies depend on exporting oil, gas or extracted minerals are likely to be poor, authoritarian, corrupt and rocked by civil war. And now a draft of a report commissioned by the bank itself has essentially concluded that the bank's previous efforts to promote such projects in poor countries has done more harm than good. Both former bank officials and outside academics have complained that bank policy often contradicts the expert research. There's a big disconnect between World Bank operations and World Bank research, said William Easterly, an economics professor at New York University who spent more than a decade as a senior adviser at the bank. There's almost an organizational feud between the research wing and the rest of the bank. The rest of the bank thinks research people are just talking about irrelevant things and don't know the reality of what's going on on the ground. In this latest case, using the bank's own internal documents, the report's author, Melissa A. Thomas, found that the bank had for years focused on promoting foreign investment in these industries without considering how the countries' governments were managed and what they were likely to do with the money. As a result, she said, in most of the nations studied - Chile, Ecuador, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania - the bank's work had not achieved its development goals. Even when the bank made loans conditional on a country's promise to make public how it had spent its revenues, the projects did not produce economic benefits. Ms. Thomas, a political economist at the University of Maryland, concluded that the bank should stop financing these so-called extractive industries in countries whose governments lack the capacity to benefit from or manage such investment. Rashad Kaldany, director of the oil, gas, mining and chemicals department of the World Bank Group, said it was awkward for me to comment, because the report was still a draft, but added: We certainly feel that the issues of good governance and corruption are of paramount importance for development. This is what we're focusing on more and more in all our activities. But scholars are skeptical. You get the sense that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing at the World Bank, said Scott Pegg, a political science professor at Indiana University. He relied on World Bank research for a recent report - commissioned by Oxfam America, Friends of the Earth, Environmental Defense, Catholic Relief Services and the Bank Information Center - that sharply criticizes the impact of extractive industries in Africa. Academics hired by the bank have criticized its work before. Some of the most important research on the resource curse has been done by bank economists. In a pioneering 1988 book issued as a World Bank Research publication, Oil Windfalls: Blessing or Curse?, Alan H. Gelb, chief economist for the bank's African regional office, found that contrary to assumptions popular at the time, oil wealth had made conditions in most countries worse. And Paul Collier, an Oxford University economics professor who now heads the bank's development research group, has demonstrated repeatedly that oil, gas and mining wealth has fueled brutal civil
[biofuels-biz] Striking It Poor: Oil as a Curse
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/07/arts/07BANK.html?pagewanted=printposition= June 7, 2003 Striking It Poor: Oil as a Curse By DAPHNE EVIATAR The pipes are already laid in southern Chad, where they snake south underground through tropical forests from the oil fields of Doba to a marine terminal off the coast of neighboring Cameroon. At the port of Kribi, the 660-mile pipeline will empty up to 250,000 barrels a day of coveted crude into tankers waiting to transport the unctuous black gold to Western markets. The largest energy infrastructure development in Africa, the Chad-Cameroon pipeline is to begin operation later this year. Built by a consortium of oil companies led by Exxon Mobil, it is expected to provide average annual revenue of $50 million. The World Bank Group has invested more than $180 million in the project, insisting that the pipeline's profits could significantly improve the lives of Chad's residents, most now living in squalor, by paying for services like health care, education, paved roads, electricity and sewer systems. Many critics find that assessment surprising, given that scholarly studies for more than a decade have consistently warned of what is known as the resource curse: that developing countries whose economies depend on exporting oil, gas or extracted minerals are likely to be poor, authoritarian, corrupt and rocked by civil war. And now a draft of a report commissioned by the bank itself has essentially concluded that the bank's previous efforts to promote such projects in poor countries has done more harm than good. Both former bank officials and outside academics have complained that bank policy often contradicts the expert research. There's a big disconnect between World Bank operations and World Bank research, said William Easterly, an economics professor at New York University who spent more than a decade as a senior adviser at the bank. There's almost an organizational feud between the research wing and the rest of the bank. The rest of the bank thinks research people are just talking about irrelevant things and don't know the reality of what's going on on the ground. In this latest case, using the bank's own internal documents, the report's author, Melissa A. Thomas, found that the bank had for years focused on promoting foreign investment in these industries without considering how the countries' governments were managed and what they were likely to do with the money. As a result, she said, in most of the nations studied - Chile, Ecuador, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania - the bank's work had not achieved its development goals. Even when the bank made loans conditional on a country's promise to make public how it had spent its revenues, the projects did not produce economic benefits. Ms. Thomas, a political economist at the University of Maryland, concluded that the bank should stop financing these so-called extractive industries in countries whose governments lack the capacity to benefit from or manage such investment. Rashad Kaldany, director of the oil, gas, mining and chemicals department of the World Bank Group, said it was awkward for me to comment, because the report was still a draft, but added: We certainly feel that the issues of good governance and corruption are of paramount importance for development. This is what we're focusing on more and more in all our activities. But scholars are skeptical. You get the sense that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing at the World Bank, said Scott Pegg, a political science professor at Indiana University. He relied on World Bank research for a recent report - commissioned by Oxfam America, Friends of the Earth, Environmental Defense, Catholic Relief Services and the Bank Information Center - that sharply criticizes the impact of extractive industries in Africa. Academics hired by the bank have criticized its work before. Some of the most important research on the resource curse has been done by bank economists. In a pioneering 1988 book issued as a World Bank Research publication, Oil Windfalls: Blessing or Curse?, Alan H. Gelb, chief economist for the bank's African regional office, found that contrary to assumptions popular at the time, oil wealth had made conditions in most countries worse. And Paul Collier, an Oxford University economics professor who now heads the bank's development research group, has demonstrated repeatedly that oil, gas and mining wealth has fueled brutal civil wars. Advocacy groups have used these findings to urge the bank to stop supporting oil and gas projects. Bank officials say they have taken steps to respond to the failings pointed out by critics. Last year the bank began a formal review of its support for these industries. We said from the outset that if there's a broad consensus that these projects don't contribute to development, and if the World Bank Group's role is not
