text: This is how these things work.  Outside corporation funds the mine/oil/etc. project.  They bring in lots of outside construction and operation people, people with plenty of experience, probably people they use elsewhere through a contractor that caters to their industry.     They pay off the politicians with thousands of dollars in campaign funding and in other ways.   They pay a CEO an obscene amount of money for doing One Thing: ensuring that the corporation gets the job done with as little expense and as much profit as possible.  Period.   The End.  The shareholders/owners receive the largest part of all the money made, the CEO receives tens or hundreds of millions, and everyone else gets as little as the corporation can get away with.  They get "jobs," and usually without much in the way of security, longevity or benefits.  One hundred highly paid CEOs in the US have as much in retirement as the bottom 40% of all Americans.