Political decisions have thus set a solid framework for the oil business and the use of oil revenues in Norway. These were a particularly important precondition for the Norwegian state to get rid of all foreign debt in the 1990s. The oil business and oil revenues have more than anything else contributed to Norway as a society being strongly changed in the last 20 years. At the same time, there is a far different Norway that today acts internationally than the Norway that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s. In developing countries, it was then Norwegian diplomats and aid that prevailed in the first place; today, aid workers are almost gone.
Instead, it is financial brokers and investors looking for new objects in which they can invest their money that one most often encounters in developing countries – as in the rich industrialized countries in the north. Norway, with the Petroleum Fund and Norwegian companies, has after a quarter become a major capital exporter and investor in countries all over the world with a total investment of approx. 4500 billion (2011). And the oil fund is the world’s largest government investment fund. Statoil is also the largest Norwegian industrial locomotive abroad .
Today, Statoil is present in 41 countries (see map); In 12 of these countries, the company is engaged in oil and gas extraction: Angola, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Brazil, Venezuela, USA, Canada, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia. Norway. These were a particularly important precondition for the Norwegian state to get rid of all foreign debt in the 1990s.
The oil business and oil revenues have more than anything else contributed to Norway as a society being strongly changed in the last 20 years. At the same time, there is a far different Norway that today acts internationally than the Norway that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s. In developing countries, it was Norwegian diplomats and aid workers who prevailed in the first place; today, aid workers are almost gone.
Instead, it is financial brokers and investors looking for new objects in which they can invest their money that one most often encounters in developing countries – as in the rich industrialized countries in the north. Norway, with the Petroleum Fund and Norwegian companies, has after a quarter become a major capital exporter and investor in countries all over the world with a total investment of approx. 4500 billion (2011). And the oil fund is the world’s largest government investment fund. Statoil is also the largest Norwegian industrial locomotive abroad.
Today, Statoil is present in 41 countries (see map); In 12 of these countries, the company operates oil and gas extraction: Angola, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Brazil, Venezuela, USA, Canada, Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, Great Britain and Norway. Statoil is the largest in Norway, a country located in Europe according to ITYPEJOB. Here, the company extracted around 70 percent of all the oil and gas the company produced in 2011. The total revenue for the company in the same year was NOK 670 billion – with a profit of NOK 212 billion after taxes and fees were paid; in the norwegian sector, investments were 45 billion.
In Canada and the USA, Statoil also produces oil from oil shale and oil sands – a particularly controversial business due to the large environmental pollution that accompanies it. And that is one of several challenges that the increased Norwegian oil business abroad raises for the “green environmental country” Norway (more later).
In all countries where Statoil has production, the company has partnership agreements either with state- owned oil companies (as in Angola and Brazil) or with other international oil companies. These agreements must be in accordance with the laws of the individual countries in which Statoil operates, and they must be in line with the interests of national and international partners. All of this, of course, creates ties to technology, finance and politics.
4: Angola – Norway’s most important country in Africa
Statoil’s most important country in Africa is Angola , a large and resource-rich country in southern Africa. Statoil started operations there in the early 1990s and has since invested a total of about NOK 80 billion in Angola. In 2011, Statoil accounted for 10 percent of the country’s oil production. In the same year, the company received new licenses (permission from the public sector to search for and extract oil) with operator responsibility. Thus, Angola will mean even more to Statoil – and Norway – in the coming years.
By agreement, in 2011 Statoil shared a large part of its oil production with the state-owned Angolan company Sonangol . The value of Sonangol’s share was just under NOK 25 billion. At the same time, Statoil paid tax to Angola of just under NOK 4 billion and invested around NOK 13 billion in the country. Statoil thus left more than NOK 40 billion in the country in 2011. In the same year, the company brought just under NOK 14 billion home to Norway as a profit.
In addition, many other Norwegian companies are linked to Statoil’s operations and the oil industry more generally in Angola. This applies to companies such as Aker Solutions, which supplies offshore high technology to Angola for several billion kroner every quarter of a year. Other Norwegian service companies operate all the time in the country with contracts from around one hundred million kroner to several billion.
Furthermore, the University of Trondheim is investing heavily in building academic institutions that will educate Angola’s own oil engineers; other norwegian educational institutions transfer technological competence at a lower level. The Institute of Marine Research in Bergen has important cooperation agreements with the Angolan state. The agreements include both environmental monitoring related to offshore oil extraction and the mapping of the major fishery resources off Angola.
Norwegian voluntary organizations such as Norwegian People’s Aid (NF) and Norwegian Church Aid (KN) also have significant program activities in the country. Both organizations work with democracy building of various kinds. KN has church organizations as some of its most important partners, while Folkehjelpa invests heavily in supporting women’s organizations, media institutions, etc. (cf. freedom of expression).
