Malaysia has been blessed with abundant resources of crude oil. Our reservoirs dotting the coast of Terengganu, Sarawak and Sabah would turn many other nations green with envy. But have the resources come at a hefty price for the average rakyat?

Off late, there have been many issues surrounding Abdullah's management of the economy (or the lack of it), and one of them have been the profits and revenue generated by state-owned petroleum giant Petronas.

The argument and logic that crops up in the average Malaysian mind is this: We are a nation producing 600,000 barrels per day of crude oil. From these 600,000 barrels, 500,000 or so barrels end up being locally consumed.

That leaves a whopping 100,000 barrels of oil to be traded in the open market. I do not need to do the math here, suffice to say that with the current rise in crude prices, Petronas would be generating three-times the revenue it generated say, five years ago.

Instead of addressing this issue, the government of the day conveniently raises the price of fuel at the pump by about 40 percent, stating the need to reduce subsidies and to channel the resources to developing the nation.

I don't need to go into the details of what such a drastic move does to the economy – we are, already experiencing the after-shocks of such an unprecedented and needless to say, reckless move by Abdullah's government.

To quell dissent, the government very conveniently says that as an oil-producing nation, we cannot go on depending wholly on the revenue generated from oil. That oil would run out in the next five to ten years is a very simplistic approach and is baseless if one were to argue on how the government came up with the figure of five to 10 years. Of course, what the government has been doing with the revenue from oil over the last 30 years or so is never addressed or discussed.

One of the questions raised by Anwar Ibrahim during his excellent debate with Shabbery Cheek was where the government got the figure of oil running out in the next five to ten years. Needles to say, Shabbery wasn't even prepared to answer simpler questions posed by Anwar, so the rakyat was probably not expecting any intelligent replies to this one too.

What the government of the day does not tell the rakyat is that Malaysia is blessed with abundant oil reserves. Before one reservoir can be depleted, two more are discovered. In the past five years alone, Petronas has discovered vast deep-water reservoirs offshore Sabah.

According to credible sources in the oil industry, these reservoirs would flow effortlessly for the next 30 years. Besides Sabah, there are vast untapped reserves in the Baram delta offshore Sarawak and the reservoirs offshore Terengganu are far from giving us their last drop of oil.

One should also not forget the stretch of sea between Terengganu and the Gulf of Siam that has been surveyed but never explored simply because Kelantan has been (thankfully) under Pas rule all this years.

Petronas has, throughout the years, used revenue generated from local oil and gas operations to diversify their business by purchasing exploration and development rights through production-sharing contracts (PSCs) in countries like Sudan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and yes, Burma too. Wouldn't this be contributing to Petronas' and the government's coffers? Shouldn't the average rakyat be enjoying these profits too?

The point is this, Malaysia is not going to run out of oil and become a net importer in the next five to ten years. No doubt we should conserve our resources and use them wisely. Even the gulf states have wisened up from their last oil-rush in the 70s.

The Arab states are using this second wave of high oil prices to diversify their economies to rely less on oil in the future. It looks like only Malaysia is going back-wards as the whole world progresses. But then, shouldn't we be ever thankful that our economy (or what's left of it) fares much better compared to Zimbabwe and Burma?

The government has to come clean with the rakyat . They should take responsibility for the mismanagement of the economy for the last 30 years and come up with solid ideas to see Malaysia through these difficult times.

Rhetoric alone is not going to see us through a global financial melt-down, which is now looming on the horizon. But perhaps, this is asking too much from an already defunct government, which can't even sort out its internal problems, what more tasked to run a dynamic nation like ours.

Our only hope would be to see a Pakatan Rakyat-led government take over at the federal level. If Pakatan does succeed, no doubt, it's going to be faced with and uphill task of setting years of wrongs, right.

But nothing is impossible; after all, Malaysians have come out tops in worse situations, as history would prove.

In the meantime, let's rejoice and celebrate the government's decision to reduce petrol prices by 10 sen. Never mind that my morning teh tarik now costs me RM2. But then again, the government will tell me to be thankful as they do not serve teh tarik in Zimbabwe.