We all pretty much depend on
oil. For us personally it heats our home and powers our car and probably does a
lot more to boot. None of us could do without it. The oil producing countries
have us – pardon the pun – over a barrel. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t
be informed about these countries, however.
Oil-producing democracies are few
Apart from Russia and Norway
the other big oil exporters are part of an exclusive club called OPEC. Most of
them are located in the Middle East (that’s if you live in the West) and all of
them feature very low indeed on the Democracy Index. This Index takes a number
of factors into consideration and then grades each country in the world. There
are five categories – from ‘full democracies’ to ‘authoritarian regimes’. Out
of the 12 OPEC countries ten of them fall into the lowest category and the
other two fall into number 4, known as a ‘hybrid regime’.
The British arms trade
I’ve drawn up a table of
these facts for easier digestion – though you’ll probably struggle to digest
the last column that I’ve included: those countries to which the UK sells arms.
These are 2010 figures, so the Libyan situation may push the country up the
Democracy Index list somewhat.
|
OPEC Country
|
Rank on Democracy Index
(167 – total)
|
Rank on oil export list
|
Imports arms from UK
|
|
Saudi Arabia
|
160th
|
1st
|
Yes
|
|
Libya
|
158
|
12
|
Yes
|
|
Iran
|
158
|
3
|
No
|
|
UAE
|
148
|
4
|
Yes
|
|
Qatar
|
137
|
15
|
Yes
|
|
Angola
|
131
|
8
|
No
|
|
Algeria
|
125
|
8
|
Yes
|
|
Nigeria
|
123
|
7
|
No
|
|
Kuwait
|
114
|
6
|
Yes
|
|
Iraq
|
111
|
10
|
Yes
|
|
Venezuela
|
96
|
11
|
No
|
|
Ecuador
|
87
|
Not known
|
No
|
I was really shocked when I saw this. How about you?
