ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes the term to encompass a variety of negative political and economic impacts which occur when exporting natural wealth, such as oil and gas reserves, dominates a country’s economy and state revenues. Timor-Leste started to export oil after other countries had suffered from their resource dependency. Leaders and international advisors learned from those experiences and set up mechanisms to manage the oil industry and its revenue in a more transparent, streamlined and sustainable manner than most. Since oil and gas money comes in with little effort, it substitutes for economic activity that requires more planning and harder work. Policies are based on unsubstantiated dreams that more oil and gas will be discovered in the country’s small territory, or that eventual development of the Greater Sunrise field will make the country rich. Timor-Leste has already survived the most obviously devastating consequences of resource wealth – foreign invasion and armed conflict.
