Natural resources and development – which histories matter?
South’ became a major source of point natural resource commodities. The business was mostly new, and mostly very profitable. Global demand has continued to expand, and grew especially fast since the turn of the century when the Chinese and other Asian economies became big importers. Time lags between identifying new reserves and bringing them on stream are long. Processes fuelled by oil, gas and their derivatives are so economically efficient that the incentive to use or develop substitute energy sources has been limited. The coordinated supply restrictions first