Many less developed countries of the world still rely upon outside mining, excavation and construction skills to develop mineral extraction or heavy civil building projects.
European and North American multi-national corporations have a long history of providing outside assistance to countries in Central / South America, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. In the past several decades, China too has been jumping on this bandwagon, extending their long hand of funding and engineering talent around the world.
However, while civil construction projects do often help the local communities they serve, mineral extraction is a different story entirely.
Dig deeper into the details of these mines and oil drilling projects and you’ll find history is riddled with cases of abuse, corruption and outright theft of natural resources.
With $Billions at stake on a typical large oil field project, there is often ample money to go around to pay off local politicians and extract the oil. Unfortunately, the local people — often poor — may get a few scraps by providing labor for the mine or oil field, but sadly once the multi-national mega-corporation leaves, they are left with a horrendous mess to clean up having realized very little of the profits from the natural resources under their feet.
