Ronald Bailey | January 5, 2007
(Page 2 of 2)
Besides the ones mentioned above, the list of corrupt oil producing
countries is nearly endless--Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Angola,
Libya--and that’s just in Africa. If an “oil crisis” fails to
materialize, it will be because nimble private oil companies will
have succeeded in boosting production capacity in enough places
around the world that temporarily losing one or two major producers
to incompetence or malice won’t matter much. But the sad fact is
that the world’s energy security would be a lot greater if more of
the world’s oil and gas resources were in the hands of private
companies.
Disclosure: Yes, yes, yes. I still own 50 shares of ExxonMobil. And
yes, ExxonMobil has been a contributor to the
Reason Foundation. So go ahead and take everything I’ve written
above with a grain of salt—it doesn’t matter because the reporting
is still as true and as accurate as I can make it.
Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book
Liberation Biology: The Scientific and
Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from
Prometheus Books.
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