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Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)
- DevOfNull 3y ago[dead]
- omegaworks 3y agoFarouk certainly played a role, but I long to see an exposé on the backchannels between elites during this period. It seems the great powers of the Global North wouldn't dare attempt to destabilize and usurp one of their own sovereigns. People are too quick to blame "state-owned monopolies" when the development and success of any producer is dependent on the gatekeepers of the global oil marketplace.
- tpmx 3y agoDisclosure: I'm a Swede who previously worked in various primarily Norwegian-owned software companies for two decades. I'm mostly happy about how it went. I also got some insights about Norway along the way via the 100+ trips to Oslo during that last decade when I had an engineering management role. That travel schedule was exhausting. My pet peeve about Norway and oil: How very few people ever call them out on being the Saudi Arabia of the north (well, minus the murders/various other kinds of oppressions). They do so much (excellent!) PR that shows them being the ethical/environmental leaders.. that totally ignores the fact that they are the people making money on pumping old fossil remains out from their seabeds. If they really meant it, they could, like.. stop doing that? I mean, pick a lane.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- marvin 3y agoNorway's gas exports saved the EU from kneeling to Russia during 2021 and 2022. Our exports prevented Russia's invasion of Ukraine from becoming an unmitigated disaster to European autonomy. Now sitting at approximately 30% of total EU natural gas consumption. Criticizing us for climate profiteering, or even war profiteering, as some European voices have done, is extremely intellectually dishonest coming from Sweden, which followed suit to Germany and shut down more than 1 GWh of nuclear energy generation capacity during an ongoing climate gas emission crisis.
- gautamdivgi 3y agoWhat do you plan to use instead of fossil fuels today?
- tpmx 3y agoIn Norway and Sweden (shared grid): Primarily electric hydro + nuclear power. Wind power adds to the mix when it's windy - and it often is. (Here's the complete picture regarding the grid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe#/media/File:ElectricityUCTE.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...) There are power cables between RG Nordic and RG Continental Europe/RG Baltic/RG GB but to my knowledge they are all via high voltage DC - so not AC phase synced.
- gautamdivgi 3y agoIs that deployed infrastructure today to handle needs and scaling for the future? I know Germany was cutting back on nuclear.
- tpmx 3y agoI think we're getting a bit off-topic here, but in a nutshell: The current government of Sweden wants to build new nuclear power plants to scale up the power supply for the future.
- gautamdivgi 3y agoThat’s good to know. Thanks!!!
- sidewndr46 3y agowell today I learned something interesting: Norway and Sweden aren't on the big grid that covers most of Europe.
- matsemann 3y agoWe (Norway) do have cables connecting us to UK and Europe. They've been a hot topic the last year with the high energy prices. We're making bank on selling our hydro power when gas got scarce. But that skyrocketed our own prices. It's a difficult topic. It's probably a net win for Norway, as we can produce when price is high, and stop our hydro and import when prices are low. The problem is just that the benefit ends up making the government and the electric producers (again owned by government orgs mostly) rich, but us people have to pay more for our own energy use. So using that extra money earned to help the people is needed.
- matsemann 3y agoI'm Norwegian, and I agree. We have deluded ourselves to believe our oil is "clean" and "green". And while stopping the pumps would probably wreak havoc on our economy, we could at least stop looking for new fields while emptying the ones we have for some more years. So slowly wean off the oil tit. But every time that's suggested, the government says "develop, not stop". And use straw men like "we can't stop abruptly!!", even though that's not the suggestion on the table. And they've used the same excuse for a decade to not do anything. If we actually started transitioning away from oil a decade ago, we would be better off. And if we at least started now we would be better off. But that can just gets kicked down the road.
- tpmx 3y agoYou mean to say Norwegians in general actually think the Norwegian oil is "clean" and "green" just because the operations to pump it up are? I mean, brain-washing can be effective, especially when there's a financial motive to believe it.
- oh_sigh 3y agoI agree, and have noticed that discrepancy, but I guess it is better than double dipping - profiting from environment-destroying products, and then investing those profits into environment-destroying products. I can't really blame the Norwegians though - even if they care about the environment greatly, it would be hard for anyone to have a lifestyle based around their $250k income and to go back to a lifestyle based around having more normal $50k income.
- tpmx 3y agoWell, I blame them because they are very, very strongly (and competently) pushing the PR message that they are clean. It's quite simple - they should pick one: stop pumping up old fossil remains to sell to keep up their luxurious lifestyle or stop bragging about how clean they are.
- hkon 3y agoDisclosure, I'm a Norwegian. Saudi Arabia of the north. Well. Actually I think Sweden might be a top contender for that name.
- tpmx 3y agoPlease do elaborate your thoughts on immigration. We're listening.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fakedang 3y agoNah, as an outsider visitor to both countries, Norway is definitely Saudi Arabia. I would have called Sweden the Pakistan or Syria of the North, except there's no comparison to the situation currently there among its peers. Sweden is in the same spot as the native Americans of the Thirteen Colonies. In my opinion, a lot of people in the comment section don't get that there is a somewhat real concern that the abundance of oil revenue has made Norwegians less ambitious and innovative in comparison to what they could have been with that kind of a world-class education system, in comparison to its neighbours. And the greenwashing of the Norwegian oil industry is actually a real thing too.
- hughw 3y agoThey should continue to produce it and explore for it until we (the world) don't need it. The "starve the beast" strategy did not work for the Reagan tax cuts and it will not work for energy.
- Mizza 3y agoStupid use of funds for the most part, it's not re-invested in the country, just the American stock market. It's not like they had to buy solid gold rolls royces, but there's no reinvestment internally other than oil and fish. Norway is a hedge fund with the F-35.
- paddim8 3y agoTheir economy is going fantastically. It's clearly working out for them.
- marvin 3y ago21% of working-age population on various forms of welfare, 33% working in the public sector and a whooping 33% working in the private sector. Taxation rates among the highest in the world. There's plenty to criticize about the Norwegian economy. The taxation of the oil wealth is definitely a great success story, but how that money is used from year to year is very much a mixed bag. We have per-capita public expenditures approximately twice those of Sweden. Average household debt at 114% of income, third place globally. We don't build housing, same as California. Oil money contributions to the national budget were approximately $6500 per capita in 2022, and on top of this we have a total taxation percentage on the order of 40% of income on average, if you do the honest calculation and look at all payments to the governments. In addition we have an energy production infrastructure that's nominally almost 100% publicly owned, but now sell electricity to citizens at EU prices (~300% markup) with the surplus going into public budgets - this is additional taxation we're not talking about. It could be worse and there are many things going right, but selling Norway as an unquestionable economic success story doesn't completely reflect reality.
- matsemann 3y agoUsing it internally would not be a good idea, though. That amount of money fueled directly into the economy would make our inflation even worse than it is.
- Mizza 3y ago
- js2 3y agoTwo previous discussions from a 2009 ft.com article titled "The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19594153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19594153 (347 points, 129 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28780108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28780108 (115 points, 81 comments) Original 2009 article: http://archive.today/2022.06.15-104752/https://www.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0 http://archive.today/2022.06.15-104752/https://www.ft.com/co...
- esotericimpl 3y ago[dead]
- pydry 3y agoIt really is amazing that there is a list as long as your arm of economies dominated by natural resource extraction for whom it has been a curse. And then there's Norway. The sole exception.
- scythe 3y agoChile hasn't done half bad either. It's perhaps worth noting that Pinochet — neoliberal reputation notwithstanding — didn't undo Allende's nationalization of the country's copper mining industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codelco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codelco
- jutrewag 3y agoNot sure what you mean. The Middle East is making out like bandits, it makes a sizeable percentage of the GDP in south and East Asia etc. it just feels like you’re putting Norway on a pedestal for no particular reason.
- preommr 3y agoThe difference is where the money goes. You can point to any country that scores high on corruption index and go "well actually, these people made out like bandits".
- jutrewag 3y agoThe Middle East is very rich with a very high standard of living. A lot of those countries have no income tax and basically free medical and utilities. Much better than what Norway offers.
- whinenot 3y agoIs the standard of living really much better in the Middle East than what Norway offers? I haven't seen any exposés on modern slavery in Norway like I have on the Middle East fiefdoms, but maybe those canny vikings are just better at hiding it?
- 0xDEF 3y agoThe problem now is that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is deeply tied to the US economy. I don't understand why we Europeans are so invested into the US economy when every American on twitter/reddit is saying the US dollar and economy is about to collapse. They might be wrong and are probably wrong but it is still incredibly stupid to invest in a country when its own citizens think it will collapse in a year or two.
- outside1234 3y ago> without trashing the environment without trashing the NORWEGIAN environment, but let's not whitewash over all of the CO2 they have unleashed on the world. More generally, I think it will be interesting to see what happens next with Norway - while they have avoided the principle resource curse - what happens when all of these oil jobs disappear (10% of direct employment and probably up to 25% in an indirect sense)?
- 0xDEF 3y agoThe intentional conflation of localized environmental pollution and the GHG damage to the global climate is something many Westerners do. That is how they have deluded themselves into thinking dirty streets in India is a bigger problem than Americans driving F150s.