But it asks questions about how it would do so, it poses challenges to an independent Scotland which it says other countries are facing, and it reflects the fact that public finances - in wealthy and poor, oil-rich and resource-starved - have a nasty habit of requiring uncomfortable choices.
Rather than intervening in the market to manipulate prices, the government could respond to a winter fuel crisis by giving all its heating-oil subsidies to poor consumers (though that would do nothing to win over other voters).
When some of his new Wyoming oil wells caught fire, Anschutz, who was cash-poor at the time, managed to convince the famous oil firefighter Paul (Red) Adair to go there to put them out.
Despite being an oil-producing republic, it was extremely poor.
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Gas does now contribute 35% to power generation, but rock-bottom prices and a sniffiness about gas as oil's poor relation mean that exploiting its bounty (Saudi Arabia apparently has the world's fifth-largest gas reserves) has proven hard.
After resistance from oil-producing countries led by Venezuela, from America, and from poor countries worried by costs, the final text includes no targets for the use of renewable energy sources such as wind, sunlight and waves.
However, the picture does not look so bright now following two poor harvests, further depletion in oil production and a drop-off in Iraqi funds, as refugees have by now largely used up their savings.
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He also wants to subsidise rice- and coffee-farming and to distribute some of the oil money in cash handouts to the poor.
When Dr Hugh Sinclair persuaded the British government in 1942 to supplement children's diets with orange juice and cod liver oil, he speculated that among other ills, poor diets could lead to anti-social behaviour.
Oil-rich Nigeria has been hobbled by political instability, corruption, inadequate infrastructure, and poor macroeconomic management, but in 2008 began pursuing economic reforms.
He tapped into their needs and frustrations -- often through confrontations with the Venezuelan elite -- and promised that the country's vast oil wealth would be redistributed to the poor.
But it concludes that the oil is continuing to break up and disperse underneath the surface, making the emergency of a major oxygen-poor dead zone unlikely.
This indicates that the factors that restrain dynamism in non-oil segments of the Angolan economy, also act as constraints on the very survival of the urban poor.
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