Humphreys, Macartan, Jeffrey Sachs, and Joseph Stiglitz. "Introduction: What is the Problem with Natural Resource Wealth?". In Escaping the Resource Curse, edited by Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey Sachs, and Joseph Stiglitz. 1-19, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

Humphreys, Macartan, Jeffrey Sachs, and Joseph Stiglitz. "Introduction: What is the Problem with Natural Resource Wealth?". In Escaping the Resource Curse, edited by Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey Sachs, and Joseph Stiglitz. 1-19, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

• The 'resource curse', refers to the fact that countries large endowments of natural resources actually tend to perform worst in terms of good governance and economic development then do countries with bountiful resources. Many resource-rich countries have remained poor, while many resource-poor nations -- like Japan and Korea -- have achieved remarkable economic success (1).
• In additional to not process economic development, large resource deposits actually tended to be associated with low levels of democracy, corruption, and civil war (1).
• The resource curse is not universal, and some countries with large natural resource deposits have done well economically. On the other hand, even in those cases, the wealth tends to be unequally distributed, with the profits from natural resources being concentrated among the elite (2).
• Wealth from natural resources is different from other kinds of wealth because it can be extracted without strongly interacting with other sectors of the national economy and without using a large domestic labor force. This means that the resource can act like a rent, which can be exploited without reference to other aspects of political life (4).
• Since international oil companies are extremely experienced in extraction and exploration, often many times more than the relevant offices in the host country, there is a potential for companies to vastly underbid for valuable drilling rights. This can be eliminated in situations of intense competition, but such competition does not always exist (4-5).
• The 'Dutch Disease', named after the collapse of Netherlandish manufacturing in the 1970s following the discovering of oil in the North Sea, refers to the negative effects of large resource wealth on other economic sectors. When natural resources are discovered, they draw capital and labor from other parts of the economy, increasing costs of production in other sectors. At the same time, inflows of capital from natural resource purchases strengthen the currency exchange rate, making national exports less competitive (5).
• The Dutch disease tends to hurt all areas of the economy outside of natural resource development and non-tradeable services, which cannot face import competition. In developed countries, manufacturing tends to be hurt, where developing countries tend to feel the pain in agricultural exports (5).
• Dutch disease can be avoided in specific cases by having the government use natural resource revenues to invest heavily in domestic infrastructure, industrial subsidies, and other growth-producing measures to offset any lose of competition from currency appreciation (9).
• Natural resources tend to be extremely subject to price volatility on world markets, as well as the rate of extraction, leaving incomes based on their extraction vulnerable to sudden increases or decreases. This makes for poor budgetary planning, and actually discourages long-term budgeting and investment (6-8).
• In severe cases, as during the oil boom of the 1970s, countries have gotten into serious trouble betting on continuing oil revenue. Countries like Mexico, Nigeria, and Venezuela all used oil revenues as collateral on development loans, only to go bankrupt in the 1980s when oil revenue suddenly declined world-wide (8).
• While a potential solution to the problem of oil revenue volatility could be selling oil or natural resource rights in exchange for immediate profit and then investing that profit in sensible ways, most of the time when oil profits or rights are sold, it is for private gains or short-term projects which will guarantee electoral popularity (9). 
• The sale of oil or other natural resources is rife with opportunities for corruption, meaning that often privatization results in significantly lower revenue for the government then would be expected, often through collusion between corrupt governments and oil companies (14).
• State with plentiful natural resources often forget about long-term planning after the resource has been depleted, failing to invest in education, workforce training, or infrastructure. When human capital is no longer integral to national growth or wealth generation, it tends to receive less investment (10).
• The temporary availability of large amounts of valuable natural resources increases the likelihood that those resources will be stolen. The wealth from natural resources can be used to maintain the political power needed to continue accessing that wealth, perpetuating a cycle that benefits and encourages corruption (11).
• States with plentiful natural resources can generate revenue without needing taxes or productive citizens, allowing governments to function with less citizen support or participation. The lack of reliance on tax revenue in particular makes states less interested in the population, meaning they are less likely to be democratic and less likely to develop robust capabilities (11-12).
• Oil exporting nations tend to spend more on their militaries than other states, and are also more likely to experience civil war. When control of the government is linked to access to oil revenues, incentives for control that wealth become greater, especially in circumstances where many political actors have little legitimacy (13-14).
• The author suggest a number of methods for supporting the exploitation of oil and natural gas resources in a way that provides for stable economic growth benefiting a broad base of society. However, in the case where these methods are not used, it may be better off for a country to simply leave the oil in the ground (15).
• The real challenge of reforming the oil and natural gas sector is that often actors are purposefully screwing over the general public for personal gain, and deliberately not making the decisions that would be best for the national good. These actors must be forced to behave better by introducing increased transparency into the oil market (18).