Francis Mesembe

Nigeria's Oil Economy at the Crossroads: Any Hope for Sustainable Development? Francis Mesembe

In recent times, petroleum sector has play crucial role in the socio-economic development of most countries in the world especially countries with great petroleum deposits. Nigeria has benefited immensely from petroleum exploitation activities as one of the countries endowed with petroleum resources. Today, the rise in the world oil prices attracted the major oil companies like Mobil, Total, Agip, Chevron and other energy companies to invest and operate in the Petroleum industry, thus enabling Nigeria to reap instant riches from oil. The notion or assumption that petroleum proceeds really articulate sustainable development has been argued by many scholars in the field of energy economics, public policy, and environmental. As such several studies have been conducted in this regards and some show inverse correlation between the level of dependency on petroleum resources and that of sustainable development in natural resource rich countries but the conclusion vary in many resource endowed countries, this assertion is evidence in this work which analysed the risks and opportunities involve in oil exploration, production/distribution and then compares with other countries of the world.