The level of dependency that America has on foreign oil is harmful to the country and the regions where the oil is located. Many governments in the Middle East region are very unstable and the oil pipelines situated there can be damaged from the fallout of a riot or revolution happening in that country. A great example of this is the revolution happening in Egypt. The Suez-Mediterranean pipeline, a major pipeline in the area, has the possibility of becoming damaged or getting shut down because of the unrest happening at the moment. This would cause gasoline prices to sharply increase, as the Suez-Mediterranean pipeline is a pipeline the United States gets its oil from. Possible solutions to these problems is the interference of the United States military to control the pipeline, serious research to energy sources that can be produced in America, and, once America’s dependency on oil is lowered, help prevent and end wars for oil happening in the region. America needs to stop depending on foreign countries, specifically in the Middle East, for its oil imports and usage.
Nigeria, a country in which 55 years ago had a chance to become great, has become nearly destroyed with the greed of oil. As Nigeria discovered its oil fortune underneath its feet, the country has been spiraling into poverty as almost all other exports dropped off the map. As said by National Geographic, oil accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and 80 percent of its revenue. In 1960, agricultural products such as palm oil and cacao beans made up nearly all Nigeria’s exports; today, they barely register as trade items (Curse of the Black Gold). Ever since Nigeria joined OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, confirming its spot a...
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During the opening years of the seventeenth century, Europe was gripped by Reformation and Counter-Reformation, when Catholics and Protestants persecuted one another with equal fervour. England was ruled by a Protestant regime, and in 1605 a group of oppressed Catholic landowners hatched a plot to kill the king, James I, during the state opening of parliament on 5 November. The plan, conceived by the Midland Catholics Robert Catesby and Thomas Wyntour, was to blow up the Houses of Parliament with dozens of barrels of gunpowder. Known as the Gunpowder Plot, it was thwarted at the last moment when conspirator Guy Fawkes was discovered nervously waiting to light the fuse. When Fawkes was tortured into revealing the names of the other plotters, the small band of conspirators fled to the Wyntour family home at Huddington Court in Worcestershire. Here they spent their last night, fleeing only a few miles the next day before being surrounded by the militia.
Almost every single nation in our world today, the United States included, is extremely reliant on oil and how much of it we can obtain. Wars have started between countries vying for control of this valuable natural resource. The United States as a whole has been trying to reduce its reliance on foreign oil and has had some success, especially with the discovery of the Bakken formation and projects like the Keystone Pipeline. Projects like the Keystone Pipeline are important as they will allow us to transport more oil than we would be able to in train cars, and grant larger access to oil reserves in the United States and Canada. The Keystone Pipeline itself is an oil pipeline which runs from the western Canadian sedimentary basin in Alberta, Canada to refineries in the United States.
Arguments: America is dependent on other nations for their ability to create energy. The United States is the world’s largest consumer of oil, at 18.49 million barrels of oil per day. And it will continue to be that way for the foreseeable future, considering the next largest customer of oil only consumes about 60% of what the U.S. does. This makes the U.S. vulnerable to any instability that may arise in the energy industry. In 2011, the world’s top three oil companies were Saudi Aramco (12%), National Iranian Oil Company (5%), and China National Petroleum Corp (4%).
Black Codes was a name given to laws passed by southern governments established during the presidency of Andrew Johnson. These laws imposed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations.
The United States has had several scares throughout its history in terms of oil, most turn out to be over exaggerations of a small event. However, these scares highlight a massive issue with the U.S. and that issue is the U.S.’s dependence on foreign oil. Why does it matter that our oil should come from over seas? In a healthy economy this probably wouldn’t be as relevant, but the U.S.’s economy is not exactly healthy at the moment. There are 4 things that I would like to address: what the problem is, how it affects us, what some solutions are, and what solutions I feel are best.
oil in Nigeria. Nigeria’s large supply of high quality crude oil helped Shell climb to the top,
Wright, R. T., & Boorse, D. F. (2011). In addition to the rise in prices, another negative aspect of the U.S. dependency on foreign crude oil is the risk of supply disruptions caused by political instability in the Middle East. According to Rebecca Lefton and Daniel J. Weiss in the article “Oil Dependence Is a Dangerous Habit” in 2010, the U.S. imported 4 million barrels of oil a day, or 1.5 billion barrels per year, from “dangerous or unstable” countries. The prices at which these barrels are being purchased are still very high, and often lead to conflict between the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries. Lefton and Weiss also add that the U.S. reliance on oil from countries that are dangerous or unstable could have serious implications for our national security, economy and environment....
Oil-Led Development: Social, Political, and Economic Consequences. CDDRL Working Paper 80. Robinson, J. A., Torvik, R. & Verdier, T. (2006). Political Foundations of the Resource Curse. Journal of Development Economics, 79, 447-468.
Significance: The United States must face the fact that the world is running out of oil and with today’s rising oil prices, economic and political instability in regions where the United States gets the majority of its oil, this country must begin looking into alternative means of energy to replace oil and end our dependence on foreign powers.
The largest petroleum-producing nation in Africa is Nigeria. The petroleum company is the main contributing factor of the GDP in the West African nation, which is also the continents, most noticeable and populous reserves. Since Nigeria was under British control it has suffered socio-economic and political adversities for decades. Corrupt domestic militias and complicity of multinational corporations have rid the nation of its natural resources. The same corporations that are ridding the land and exploring the resources have hypocritically identified Nigeria as a major concern with regard to human rights and environmental degradation. The petroleum business in Nigeria dynamically impacts its economy so much that “oil and gas exports accounted for more than 98% of export earnings and about 83% of federal government revenue, as well as generating more than 40% of its GDP.” Just to be reminiscent on this fact, the petroleum business accounts for almost the entire exporting business of a country so it raises the question of, where is the income going and how is it bring redistributed?
The question to be answered in this paper is to what extent has the resource curse affected the Nigerian economy and government? Resource curse is a term that states the observation that countries that have a plethora of natural resources (e.g. oil, coal, diamonds etc.). usually have unstable political and economic structures (Sachs, 827). Nigeria is categorized as a nation that has succumbed to the resource curse as it has an abundance of, and an overdependence on, oil, and a decreasing gross domestic product (GDP) (Samuels, 321-322). Nigeria is known for its specialization and overdependence on oil and according to Ross, nations of such nature tend to have high levels of poverty, large class gaps, weak educational systems, more corruption within the government, and are less likely to become democracies (Ross, 356).
Omeje, K. (2005). Oil conflict in Nigeria: Contending issues and perspectives of the local Niger Delta people. New Political Economy, 10(3), 321-334. doi:10.1080/13563460500204183
Nigeria was a great area for the British to manufacture goods, so Nigeria became part of the British imperial expansion that focused on exploiting raw materials and minerals that were important to Western industrial development. Britain mainly tried to stimulate tropical export crops in Nigeria and to get demand in the area for British manufactured goods. Developments such as the introduction of the pound sterling as the universal medium of exchange, encouraged “[The] medium of exchange, encouraged export trade in tin, cotton, cocoa, groundnuts, and palm oil” (Metz 1992). Specifically, the important product that the British wanted to export was palm oil. Palm oil was the type of oil used for cooking all over the world that comes from the palm oil tree. Nigeria had resources that weren't available anywhere else, and British wanted to use these resources to make
Gold, nothing can compare to this precious metal. A symbol of wealth and prosperity, it has been a value for explorers and adventurers and a lure for conquerors. Today it is vital to commerce and finance; popular in ornamentation, and increasing importance in technology.
The objective of this report is to give understanding on the culture of Nigeria, the diversity of its people and the overwhelming struggles that exist. It also discusses the movements of the people, and how kingdoms arose and grew, and the expansions in their industries, in petroleum and their rural contributions, also the demographic features of the population of Nigeria, including population density, ethnicity, economic status, religious affiliations and added aspects of the population, and how Nigeria incorporates a more complete range of climate settings, and the environmental dangers the lands face, with corrosion, and the campaigns local and national, that fight to protect land from industrial development. The country's land that varies greatly, with lowlands in the south, hills and plateaus in the central region and plains in the north, with coastal swamps and tropical forests take over the southern lands, while the north is mostly savannah and semi-desert.