National oil companies | Oil’s dark secret | Economist.com
Iran, which has more oil and gas than all other countries save Saudi Arabia and Russia, pumps less today than it did in 1979, when the new Islamic government threw foreigners out. The current expansion of Russia’s NOCs is proving equally ill fated: costs have risen and output has grown more slowly at Yuganskneftegaz, the former production arm of Yukos, a Russian oil company, since its takeover by state-controlled Rosneft, according to Andrei Illarionov, a former adviser to the Russian government. Over the past 20 years, he points out, income per head has grown in countries with private oil industries, but has shrunk in those with nationalised ones.
Saad Rahim, of PFC Energy, argues that weak institutions lie at the root of this disappointing performance. Most countries with national firms used their oil wealth to develop the authority of the state, rather than the other way around. So NOCs sprang up before their countries had institutions strong enough to regulate them, or to manage the money they generate—a recipe for inefficiency and corruption.
The Rinspeed “Splash” is the true incarnation of a really cool and fun sports toy. At the push of a button a cleverly thought-out hydraulic mechanism transforms the sports car into an amphibious vehicle.
Each year, nearly 3 million migrants move from poor countries to wealthier ones. Increasingly, however, more of this migration will occur between developing countries, such as that occurring from Bangladesh to India, or from India, Egypt, and Yemen to the Persian Gulf States.
While the Netherlands led the pack on generous investment aid as well as measures to curb greenhouse gases, the CGD added they could work harder.
In December 1978, Microsoft had just completed its first million-dollar sales year, and the decision was made to decamp from the company’s Albuquerque, New Mexico, headquarters and relocate to bigger and better digs in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington. The formal studio photograph displayed above was taken on 7 December 1978, shortly before that move, and captured all but a couple of the current Microsoft staff. While this picture has been around the Internet for awhile, snopes.com has the stories of what happened to those pictured. Just click on the link above this photo.