This 2009 photo shows a StatoilHydro floating offshore wind turbine in the North Sea off the coast of Norway.OEYVIND HAGEN
Doomsayers fearing an early end to Norway's staggering petro-wealth - with its trunk lines to Europe's gas grid - are being drowned out these days by cries over power bills and trumpeting over record-high investments in offshore oil fields.
A second straight best-ever year of spending is winding down: 2010 saw oil companies in Norway sink 139.4 billion kroner ($23.81-billion) into exploration, modifications and pipelines, or eight billion kroner more than in 2009. For 2011, industry pollsters forecast 151 billion kroner.
To assuage long-term economic fears over fast-falling oil revenues, Oslo on Tuesday declared a two-year energy policy review ostensibly aimed at bringing more wind and small-scale mountain hydropower into the oil nation's power mix. Norway is No. 5 in oil exports and No. 3 in gas (after Canada and Russia), but electricity shortages for industry are common due to a dearth of power plants, power lines and the kilowatts traded away at Scandinavian exchange Norpool.
The policy-review announcement stumbled, however, when the energy minister later declared the country was also opening up to oil and gas exploration in an untapped 100,000 square kilometres bordering Greenland and Iceland. The far-flung ocean acreage marks the first promising sedimentary deposits to be showcased in 16 years.
The pledge to open new acreage to drill rigs and to review incentives for green energy show Norway is serious about adapting to new energy realities. There's an agreement with Europe to exploit future power cross-border via seabed cable. The government moves, though, came within days of national newspaper reports showing the late-winter electricity bills of ordinary Norwegians will reach a month's salary: "More oil" and "new electricity" began sounding like public relations.
You have to wonder how a multinational wind giant like Siemens tackles the loud proclamations on oil and gas. Siemens is a key partner in state champion Statoil's green ambitions, but eager to begin exploiting a breezy shoreline as long as the U.S. West Coast. There's just a trickle of announcements on the future of wind power in Norway, where incentives lag much of the world and dozens of projects sit in regulatory limbo. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was chastised by industry figures for suggesting a controversial subsidy with the outdated name "green certificates" might be used to spur the development of wind and small-scale hydro.
Renewable energy covers just 8 per cent of European demand - still far from the 30 per cent by 2020 target - and "decades" of European dependence on Norwegian oil and gas is what most here hope for and see.
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