"At one end of the spectrum is Norway, who decided not to sell resource rights for peanuts... At the other end is the Middle Eastern countries. Monarchs and des

"At one end of the spectrum is Norway, who decided not to sell resource rights for peanuts... At the other end is the Middle Eastern countries. Monarchs and despots have largely enriched themselves and their families" Note that while in resource effect they are the opposite, in terms of resource exploitation structure they are close. Both cases nationalized their oil production - yeah, some ME states had a Western monopoly first, but that was decades ago. For the last 30 years, nearly all ME countries have nationalized their production. The difference has more to do with governance structures, industrialization (Norway already had industry when oil was discovered) and resource curse.