Surging oil prices are draining our foreign exchange revenues.

Oil exploration and extraction usually generate important royalties for central Governments.

Any surplus revenues from the sale of crude oil and gas are to be paid into the Oil Stabilization Fund (OSF).

Oil accounts for about 98 of Iraq s current export revenue.

Rents from oil production impede reforms in the major exporting countries.

A decline in oil revenues could be devastating to the fledgling Iraqi government.

As of 2010, oil income accounts for 80 of Iran's foreign currency revenues and 60 of the nation's overall budget.

To combat the impact of such dependence, they spend oil revenues on other sectors, leaving the oil sector with little investment.

Just to give you one example Angola alone is getting 50 billion dollars a year in oil revenue.

Under Iraq s constitution, the Kurdish region is entitled to 17 of the country s oil and gas revenues.

With energy revenues screeching to a halt, Putin s regime will lose popularity.

The fight to control oil and gas revenues is paramount in this regard.

The KRG hopes that a deal with Turkey would allow it to obtain more regular and predictable hydrocarbon revenues.

The new national budget has forecast a 40 drop in oil revenues compared to the previous year's projected figure.

If the world used less oil, Iran would become less threatening, because its radical rulers rely on oil revenues to purchase domestic support and pursue their regional goals.

Thus, nuclear power will halt the decline in government revenues by freeing more oil and natural gas for export.

Unfortunately, Chad, under the agreements linking it to the oil consortium, benefits from only a small proportion of the revenues resulting from its oil.

Indeed, with domestic oil consumption growing at a higher rate than production, government revenues from oil exports are already in decline.

They did not benefit from oil revenues from their ancestral land, and lacked basic services such as electricity, telephones, schools, hospitals and health clinics.

High oil prices have created huge export revenues for Middle Eastern governments, which still want to park their earnings in American assets.

A decline in oil revenues could be devastating to the fledgling Iraqi government. Current oil revenues are barely enough to cover state expenses, let alone pay for reconstruction, debt, and war reparations.

Political scientists tell us that rentier economies, or economies that depend on oil and foreign aid, stimulate greed and grievances.

Revolution within a Revolution 1987 98 The late 1980s saw a series of liberalising economic reforms within Libya designed to cope with the decline in oil revenues.

Moreover, members of Russia s military and political elite hoped to use some of the country s oil revenues to deploy a new generation of ICBMs.

Northern governors could, for example, offer the southern states a larger share of Nigeria's oil revenue in exchange for their support for a northern president.

Although it had oil revenue, the flow of dollars into an economy, by itself, does not boost prosperity as much as one might think.

More than 90 of Venezuela s export earnings come from the oil and gas sectors, which provide about half of the government s income.

Rising oil prices, unforeseen tsunami related expenditures and revenue shortfalls in the tourism sector are creating significant fiscal pressures at alarmingly high levels.

Revenues In 2004, about 45 percent of the government's budget came from exports of oil and natural gas revenues, although this varies with the fluctuations in world petroleum markets and 31 percent came from taxes and fees.

When Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hinted that Iran could play the oil card, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed the idea. Let s just remember that Iran is some 80 dependent on oil in its budget, she said, so it is not really able to live with a disruption.

Cuba cannot remain isolated, dependent on Venezuelan petrodollars and penalized by America s ill conceived trade embargo.

Even the oil sector the lifeline of the Libyan economy, accounting for 95 of the country s foreign currency earnings suffers from a shortage of professional managers.

Pacifying the Delta is vitally important, because Nigeria, the world s eighth largest oil producer, earns 86 of its export revenue from oil.

So far, the good offices of the Norwegian government have failed to produce an agreement on the key question of the post independence distribution of oil revenues between North and South.

But it is PRONACO s demand that at least 50 of the oil revenue derived from the Niger delta and other states in the south be retained in the area of production that most threatens the survival of the country s survival as a united entity.

While Mexico had a petroleum based boom in the wake of the second oil price shock of the 1970 s, Argentina suffered from economic mismanagement under a military dictatorship that then staged its disastrous invasion of the Falkland Islands Malvinas.

Reducing oil revenues by using less oil would also weaken other international troublemakers, actual and potential Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, for example, and Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Its economy was heavily dependent on revenue from oil and gas, with high tech goods representing only 7 of its manufactured exports (compared to 28 for the US).

Adherence to these principles ensures that private rent seeking and appropriation of oil profits, a major dimension of the so called resource curse, is avoided.

Instead of spending money on armaments, as Chávez has done, Rosales plans to redistribute 20 of Venezuela s national oil revenue directly to citizens in the lowest income groups.

Nothing will be easy, given growing problems of security, governability, institutional stability, and economic performance, with the prospect of renewed global recession threatening oil revenues.

The parliament was under pressure from the United States to pass legislation dealing with members of the Baath party, distribution of oil revenues, regional autonomy, and constitutional reform, by September 2007.

For decades, Qaddafi had behaved as if he were, as his propagandists proclaimed him, King among African Kings, using his country s abundant oil revenues to provide aid to his neighbors.

MEND and other local groups are demanding that the country return to true federalism in the spirit of 1960, and that 50 of oil revenue be retained by the region s inhabitants.

He told me that all Venezuelans believed that they had been born with a loaf under their arm that is, a right to a share in the country s oil revenues.