Can Oil Wealth Help the Poor?

Fortunes are made and lost in relation to the supply and demand for oil. Lives are lost as well. I was curious as to whether there was an oil industry in Colombia, a country with by some estimates the second worst humanitarian crisis on the Planet. It is not a significant factor. The country accounts for about 4% of the regional demand and only about 2% of the supply.

A country that gets a lot of international attention in relation to oil is Venezuela. The windfall from huge oil production there has been nationalized and the wealth is used in some inventive ways by the country's leader. Hugo Chavez got lots of free publicity when he sold subsidized home heating oil to poor people in the United States.

Given the sporadic and sometimes dramatic rises in value, oil investments might seem like a way to cash in on the fact that we live in interesting times. Politics that lead to nationalization result in huge losses for investors. You need to know whose oil you are investing in.