dictators:: financial incentive?

Why there are dictators are in middle east? There could be many answers: historical, religious, climate or what not... There could be some truth in all of them . One of the argument that I heard was that presence of oil could have brought a perverse incentive for dictators to setup autocratic rule. Being oil rich country, the government dont need to control people but oil. Controlling oil is much easier through force and command and control mechanism rather than people on a long term basis. Oil provides much needed revenues for the government without taxing the people and hence less resentment among public about a dictator. Also oil gives valuable foreign currency to a country hence making the government immune to foreign pressures. The revenue from oil can be used for public benefits like road, hospital etc hence reliving the public pressure for democratic freedom. Russia has also gone from democratic tendencies to dictatorial powers of Putin. This can also be explained by oil rich reserves of Russia. Is this a generalization ? No certainly not.. Norway remains a democratic nation though it is oil rich. South east Asia like Indonesia which has some oil reserves have shown periods of dictatorship between bouts of democracy. Africa has lots of other natural resources like copper, gold, tin etc which may also explain the dictatorial regime in many of these countries..