Economists View points to a great video from the 1950s explaining the virtues of oil and competition to a Martian visitor. Note how clean the oil extraction process is made to look. If you need only one reason to see There will be Blood, it is for the (literally) dirty history of oil exploration.
Then there is a new Chevron video, brought to us by Tree Hugger, that argues that they are innocent of the environmental problems caused by their oil fields in Ecuador. I really enjoy the pseudo journalist editing that focuses on everyone but the victims.
I must admit to being very biased in the issue. When told by a World Bank employee that Chevron was "one of the finest companies on the planet" recently, and then immediately having a Chevron representative tell me that complaints against Debeers in Africa and other diamond companies was over done because "didn't Debeers do good? Can't we find things they did that were of social value to local communities?", I realized I needed a shower to clean off the guilt.
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1 comment:
Good post Nathan. I enjoy reading the blog very much. You should write about resource economics in East Africa. Lots of good stuff there and I am sure you understand the issues very well.
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