How the Norwegians strong-armed the robber barons of Big Oil

Mitch Anderson, The Viking guide to Oil Wealth Management, Reasons to be Cheerful.

Like many other nations, Canada is blessed with enormous resource wealth. We are the 7th largest oil-producing nation in the world (Norway is the 15th), with vast forests, mineral deposits and prime farming land. The Canadian province of Alberta legally controls almost 80 percent of the country’s fossil fuel production, has a similar population to Norway yet somehow managed to end up with a $62 billion debt and another $260 billion in unsecured environmental liabilities. Other nations like Nigeria, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia have become even more wretched examples of resource mismanagement, with deplorable human rights records, dysfunctional economies and rampant graft.

Norway is different. Unlike many countries endowed with natural abundance, Norway has somehow avoided the so-called resource curse—where outside interests make off with most of the money and leave behind corrupt and enfeebled institutions.

Norway currently has $1 trillion in oil revenues in their sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest.

Some background:

Some of these values that pre-date the Viking Age are still reflected in present day Norwegian laws. The ancient principle called Odelsrett recognized that if the same family occupied land for six generations, family members have a right to purchase it back if ever sold to a stranger. A version of these 1,000 year old inheritance rights remain enshrined in the Norwegian constitution, and anyone buying a Norwegian farm over 3.5 hectares (8.6 acres) is required to live there for at least five years.

Such Old Norse cultural conditions proved important when they first encountered the 20th century economy. Around 1905, speculators started to pour into the fjords of Norway backed by French and German investors seeking to purchase water rights for hydro developments. Rural Norwegians were outraged that mere money might buy properties occupied by the same families dating back to the Iron Age.

Popular anger led to the passage in 1906 of the Panic Law, halting resource sales until Norway could develop a legal framework preventing natural heritage from being sold as a commodity. Norwegians wanted access to new technologies and the money to develop them, but on their own terms.

Later called Concession Laws, these restrictions decreed that hydro dams and generation plants could be built and operated for 60 years but foreign companies had to train Norwegians in their construction and maintenance. After 60 years the facilities were to be transferred free of charge to the Norwegian Crown. If companies didn’t like those terms, they could pack up their carpetbags and go elsewhere.

Not long after the hydro leases came due decades later in the 1970s, offshore oil was discovered and Norway imposed similar strict conditions on foreign oil companies. Many of these were laid out in what became known as the 10 commandments of the Norwegian oil industry. Tabled in a white paper in 1971, these stipulated that oil extraction would be slow, controlled by the Norwegian people and processed in Norway.

To say the oil industry is accustomed to getting their way around the world is an understatement, so Big Oil was in for a surprise when they failed to politically divide and conquer Norwegians as had been profitably done in many other countries. The government had already signed multi-year leases with many of the world’s largest oil companies but a Mideast oil embargo had ballooned the global price of oil fourfold. Norwegians decided windfall corporate profits were unfair, and that since they owned the resource, they could change the terms if they wanted.

And that's what they did. They raised taxes on oil profits to almost 80%. Of course the oil companies objected and threatened to abandon their leases. The Norwegian government called their bluff and they backed down.

There's more at the link. H/t 3QD.