In theory every country rich in natural resources should follow Norway's example but in practice the presence of natural resources tends to exert a strong corrupting influence on both the economy and the political system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

Norway only dodged this because we had a supremely visionary Iraqi visit the authorities, and managed to convince them of this danger while the industrial influence was still small enough for government to manage. It's a remarkably lucky coincidence.

Planet Money made an episode about this http://www.podcasts.com/npr_planet_money_podcast/episode/301...

Thanks!

Is there a source of information you could point me to that explains more of this story?

See my link to a sibling comment of yours

Do you have any resources about this? It sounds like a fascinating story.

Farouk al-Kasim. It's a fascinating story, glad I found this in webarchive as it's now behind a paywall.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com/...

I really enjoyed the story... but find myself wondering what was the specific “magic” that made it work.

Nowadays everything is “setup” for the cooperation of public and private, but what are the key “ingredients” to make it happen?

The fact that this worked out, is it something unique to that situation, or cannot be duplicated?

The part I find most enticing is this idea of the government shouldering 50% of the risk, and industry only having to do 15%. If anyone could expand on this, I would appreciate it.

> Nowadays everything is “setup” for the cooperation of public and private, but what are the key “ingredients” to make it happen?

Norweigans trust their government, corruption is low, there's strong institutions already in place (a point specifically mentioned by al-Kasim in the Planet Money podcast) to ensure a competent and transparent execution of the plan. There's not many places in the world where all those factors exist sadly.

Thank you, this is fascinating!

Holy moly, what a story. I remember reading it a few years ago, and what a crazy example of butterfly effect. The one Norwegian girl who decided she wanted to be an au-pair in London, and met an Iraqi boy there, changed the whole country.

Dutch disease : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Also the "resource curse".

Although a more accurate formulation seems to be the "sudden resource curse".

E.g. how the discovery that citrus prevents scurvy and the subsequent spike in prices likely led to the emergence of the Sicilian mafia

In theory you are right but, in practice, that only happens because they don't follow Norway's example :-)

Interestingly there's a connection between WA and Norway that not everyone is entirely pleased about: https://www.fightforthebight.org.au/

Norway - the country that avoided the oil curse

We would love to. Trust me, we really really would.

But the is such huge amount of great mongering about corporate add mineral taxes that no major party will attack it.

The Minerals Council of Australia is incredibly well funded and hugely politically influential.

Nah, we're far too short sighted for that sort of thing.