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Western Europe’s biggest petroleum producer is falling out of love with oil.
To the dismay of the nation’s powerful oil industry and its worker unions, the opposition Labor Party over the weekend decided to withdraw its support for oil exploration offshore the sensitive Lofoten islands in Norway’s Arctic, creating a solid majority in parliament to keep the area off limits for drilling.
The dramatic shift by Norway’s biggest party is a significant blow to the support the oil industry has enjoyed, and could signal that the Scandinavian nation is coming closer to the end of an era that made it one of the world’s most affluent.
How will Norway pay for its social safety network without oil revenues?
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Norway Is Walking Away from Billions of Barrels of Oil
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Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx's last words
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:54AM (4 children)
And that difference is? It's not an investment where sitting on it means someone else is using your capital and making things of value. It's wasting an asset. And it won't become any more valuable in the future, particularly if humanity moves away from oil in a big way just like the people who are blocking the move want.
That's the thing to remember. The people making this choice expect oil to drop in value when it gets regulated out of use for transportation. They're not doing it for the future investment. It is indeed walking away.
The thing that bugs me here is not the "walking away". It's the lack of reason for doing so. Sorry, I don't buy that global warming or the more local pollution issues of drilling are serious enough to justify this action. In each case, they've had decades to make their cases. I think the fundamental driver is more a form of Ludditism, blocking progress because oil use is perceived as inherently evil - irrespective of actual consequences.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 09 2019, @12:07PM (2 children)
What would be the reason to do otherwise?
Norway seems to have enough money from their investment [soylentnews.org], so what's your problem with how they choose to do with their oil?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:41PM (1 child)
Norway != Labor Party != elites of Labor Party cutting deals with other political elites. I guess my problem with it is petty decisions made by proxy.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Tuesday April 09 2019, @10:03PM
In the same time, Norway != khallow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:46PM
It's a political decision. I'm sure a significant part of the political majority just wants to slow down the resource extraction and leave more for future generations. If global temperatures don't rise so much over the next few decades, they will revisit the decision.
"Walking away" would be equivalent to injecting some kind of poison into the reservoir, so the oil can never be extracted. Apart from the technical feasibility, I doubt that move would carry the day politically.