How oil did not corrupt Norway
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Canada, the US, Australia, and yes - Norway, all come to mind. Usually, the factor that enables a country to resist corruption from natural resources comes from having a proper governance system already in place.
Even something that many perceive as trivial, like tax collection, is essential. Because what often happens is, a nation will not collect taxes and instead say they will let the riches from natural resources trickle down to the citizenry. This enables dictatorships/political elites to remain entrenched at their expense.
You also need government agencies in place to make sure that surveys are being conducted properly so that the auction process can be optimized.
I remember a story about an African nation that needed to auction off mining rights. Their data was well over 100 years old, whereas some MNC mining companies had state of the art testing, as a result there was asymmetrical information that worked against their government.
One way to circumvent that lack of information is to auction permits in a rolling manner. So you auction off the ability to only mine in one small area. Then, if there is a discovery, you can raise initial prices for future permits in the surrounding area.
Sounds like Alberta.
That's certainly true. I think most of those countries are countries that have healthy economies independent of natural resource exploitation. This is certainly true of your examples, even, to some extent Norway (about a quarter of Norway's GDP comes from the petroleum industry according to Wikipedia). This is not to discount the importance of proper governance, as you say. However, I think there's a case to be made that part of the reason that many nations rich in natural resources have problems is because their extractive industries account for such a huge proportion of their economies.
The poster above brings up Alberta, you bring up Norway.
But Dutch Disease is just one detrimental 'symptom' of the resource curse.
Some of the more adverse symptoms are increased levels of conflict and corruption and those are precisely the fears you need to have when looking at Afghanistan's potential mineral wealth because there is a lack of proper governance in place.
Now going back to your example, Norway -- and Alberta too. It is precisely because of their governance systems that they can harness natural resource wealth at more optimal levels than nations with the curse.
Norway for example has one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. That provides a mechanism for reinvesting the natural resource wealth into other industries. I am no experts on SWFs, but from my reading, Norway's SWF has a pretty good reputation.
To contrast that, look at some of the resource rich conflict nations in Africa. They don't have formal laws and organizations to structure transparent SWFs, they have swiss bank accounts that they use to raid government revenues and sometimes fund militias.
So it is good governance that helps minimize the friction caused by new found natural resource wealth and redistribute it in an optimal manner.
Norway is also politically more socialist than the US. This is one area where I admire the US more, because the US has more opportunities for innovation, tech startups and in general a more agile and productive economy outside of the oil industry.
PS: I'm Norwagian...
Also, Norway is usually at the bottom of the Nordic countries in corruption rankings. Usually this is attributed to the oil sector.
Dutch disease might be a problem, but /I/ think it will be quite mild, because we are so aware of the possibility. Salary increases have not been totally out of proportion this year, unless you start thinking about the countries around us with actually sinking salaries....
/also Norwegian
Apples to apples, not really. The comparison would be between people of Scandinavian descent in the US and Norwegians generally. The people of Scandinavian descent in the US are also healthier and wealthier over all compared to their relatives still in Europe.
PS: I'm an American living in Norway. :)
Considering the US position in Afghanistan, this seems like a strategic plant on behalf of the Pentagon/govt to justify our continued deployment there. The NYT has certainly played a willing role in the past (google Judith Miller and Iraq).
1. They didn't allow the oil companies to call the shots. With this, they managed to avoid a lot of the corruption we see with MMS in the US. 2. Rather than spend the profits from oil, Norway invested it. So when oil production drops, they don't face a huge budget gap, they just have less to put into the investment fund. Granted, they need to start figuring out what will happen when oil production dries up completely, but they have quite some time before that becomes an issue.
Step two was to introduce a regulating body with strict policies (the policies were written by the subject of the article). The policies included extraction rates, technology standards, environmental standards etc.
Third step was that the regulating body treated the government owned oil company just like any other when it came to tenders or exploration licenses - which minimizes corruption in government (or just shift corruption to this regulating body, really - but I guess they have some form of parliamentary oversight).
Further step was that all profits from exploration and drilling went into a sovereign wealth fund which would divest the wealth of the nation into foreign markets - smoothing out economic cycles domestically and providing a future fund.
All of these policies together contributed to a system that has less of a corrupting effect on both the local government and local economy. It is a best case example of how to maximize the overall benefit from resource wealth that would usually only benefit a selected few people or just a select sector.
The oil industry contributes a large part of the GDP of Norway, but it's not a large employer.