Oil resource endowment in a country should be a good source of wealth to the citizens. As expected, citizens from such countries should enjoy cheaper prices for most of the goods and services especially petroleum products and they should not be suffering from inadequate supply of petroleum products. Statistics have contrary showed that population of some of the oil producing countries are suffering from issues like limitation on gasoline purchase quantities, and expensive gasoline prices. This controversial can be better explained by considering the nature of these countries in terms of technology, economic level, educational level of the citizens, political environment of such countries and even the location of such countries.
The level of technology in a country plays an important role in determining whether such a country will economically utilize its resource or not. In some oil producing countries for example, they may be producing oil in its raw form but due to lack of enough skills and technology, they will be forced to export their oil in its raw form to other countries. This will undergo processing and then when the oil has been processed, they will have to import at relatively higher prices than they export it. Because of this, the citizens from such countries will be forced to buy oil products at expensive prices. Economic factors also play some role in determining whether the citizen of some oil producing countries will enjoy fair prices and quantities of oil products like gasoline. This is because if a country is able to finance the oil production processes right from extraction through processing to marketing, then there would be a high likelihood of citizens from such countries to enjoy cheaper prices and good quantities of oil products.
Since educational level determines technological level and to some extend economical level of a country, then we can deductively reason out that the educational level of some oil, producing nations may be one of the contributing factors to higher prices and lower quantities of oil products in these countries. Lastly, the political environment may also contribute to the above controversial in that political instability prevent exploitation, extraction, processing and marketing of oil and oil products. Therefore, basing on the above discussion, for these countries to manage their resources in a better way they should improve in technology, education, economic level, and they should create a politically stable environment.
References:
Kunstler, H. (2006). The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Grove Press, 2006.
Mabro, R. (2007). Oil in the 21st century: issues, challenges and opportunities: Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Rutledge, I. (2006). Addicted to oil: America's relentless drive for energy security. New York: I.B.Tauris
