The ‘go go years' are over and our ‘oil lottery' money is fast depleting mainly due to mismanagement by the powers-that-be, decried veteran politician Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.
According to the Petronas founder, the original plans of the oil giant did not include over-production to pay for billions of ringgit worth of unnecessary government projects.
"It started with this (defence equipment purchase) agreement with (then British prime minister) Margaret Thatcher, and suddenly the production of oil was doubled from 650,000 barrels per day to over a million barrels a day (to fund the purchase). That was too much for us...