■"India Takes On the World: State-Owned Oil Firm Joins Global Fight for Energy Security," by John Larkin, Wall Street Journal, 19 May 2005, p. A12.

■"Foreign Gas Companies in Bolivia Face Sharply Higher Taxes," by Juan Forero, New York Times, 18 May 2005, p. A10.

India, like so many other emerging markets, has the tendency to rely on National Oil Companies, or NOCs, to secure it's energy "security." Too bad it doesn't have any significant amounts of oil at home.

Since that's the case, India takes the logical (but hardly mature) next step of having that NOC make direct investments in oil fields around the world. I say hardly mature because this emphasis on direct investment is driven by an old-fashioned belief that the country's NOC must own the "barrel in the ground" to feel truly secure about its access, something that made more sense decades ago when oil wasn't much of a global market but makes far less sense today because such efforts typically mean the NOC in search of oil is paying too damn much for this access. Why? They inevitably end up looking for oil in countries thatófor a variety of reasonsóhaven't received the same level of attention from Western multinationals. Those reasons usually include such things as poor investment climates, too much corruption, or marginal returns because the oil is hard to access or is of a less valued quality.

So where is India's NOC investing these days? Russia (tough investment climate), Sudan (nuff said), Vietnam (You remember the argument that American fought the war over oil there? Complete BS.), and Myanmar (oh so nice).

Still, at least it's driving FDI abroad and that's some connectivity and some connectivity is better than none. So we commend India for opening outwardly, even if its choice of vehicle is less than ideal.

Bolivia is taking the opposite track in the opposite situation: it has Latin America's second-largest natural gas deposits, but apparently is intent on scaring away foreign investors from Brazil (Petrobras), France (Total) and Spain (Repsol). The antiglobalizers there believe the foreign companies have and will continue to rip off the nation, so their answer is nationalization.

Brilliant huh? If the government they have in Bolivia isn't up to creating the right legal rule set to gain a fair return from allowing such outside investment to access the gas deposits in the first place, then why would anyone believe it's capable of running those gas fields in such a way as to garner a better yield? Unfortunately, this is the mental trap that Gap countries fall into time and time again across history, begetting the slowest paths to development possible: a governmental or rich, private-sector elite controlling all the benefits from natural resources and the public assuming that somehow, if those fixed sums of wealth were better distributed, the country would experience broadband economic development. This is zero-sum thinking at its worst, and it's what keeps the Gap the Gap.