NY Times: Still clawing its way out of the ruins of its brutal past, Cambodia has come face to face with an extraordinary new future: It seems to have struck oil. Exploratory drilling began two years ago, and the oil giant Chevron says it has found potentially huge deposits off the southern shore. The company has not made the results known, but together with other likely deposits nearby and with mineral finds being explored onshore, experts say, Cambodia could be a resource-rich nation. Top officials, including Prime Minister Hun Sen , have been feeding the excitement this year, offering extravagantly optimistic estimates that the oil money could start to flow within two to three years. But all of this is not necessarily good news. For many struggling countries, like Nigeria and Chad, oil has been a poisoned bonanza, paradoxically dragging them into deeper poverty and corruption in what some call the oil curse. “This will be a watershed event for this country one way or another,” s...
