Perhaps not as interesting answer as could have been. Most well known oil countries were not democracies when oil got discovered. Norway was one of the most democratic countries in the world with one of the lowest levels of income inequality when oil got discovered.

Very down to Earth socialists had been in charged most of the time leading up to the discovery. People who had been manual workers and lived in humble conditions. They were not a flamboyant bunch. They liked the simple life like hiking in the forest.

American oil companies promising quick riches did not impress them. They were not willing to sell themselves short for a quick buck. There was pretty much nobody these oil companies could bribe.

They sure did everything they could and tried every dirty trick in the book to take full ownership of Norwegian oil. But Norwegians had experience with manipulative foreign capitalists before trying to exploit our natural resources. In the early 1900s British capitalists went around Norway buying Norwegian water falls by getting farmers drunk on hard liquor.

Norwegian politicians had no interest in seeing a repeat of that. The idea of natural resources as belonging to the people of Norway rather than any capitalist, foreign or domestic was firmly entrenched. It was viewed as the family silver and you don’t sell that for a quick buck.

Norway was willing to delay development of the oil sector to retain full national control. They spent a lot of time playing different foreign oil companies out against each other, to uncover any attempts at deception or manipulations.