How did Norwegians get so petro-smart? The Tyee sent Mitchell Anderson there to find out. First of his reports.
Norway's tough deal with foreign firms
How is all this paid for? Since the 1970s, Norway as a matter of policy has collected between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of the resource wealth generated from their oil industry through corporate taxes twice as high as Canada, and a special tax on oil profits. In Alberta, royalties collected on all oil sands production in 2010 were 10 per cent of industry revenues.
Norway also required that foreign companies train Norwegian workers, transfer proprietary technologies to their state-owned oil company Statoil, and in some cases even hand over producing oil platforms free of charge after a predetermined period.
This insistence on national participation has paid off. Companies controlled by the Norwegian taxpayer now directly own about 30 per cent of the nation's oil production, providing another significant source of income as well as technical input on how their resource is developed.............
Yet by far the largest oil-related controversy in Norway is actually about Alberta. Statoil became a minor player in the Canadian oil sands in 2007 and many Norwegians feel this investment is unethical. The Norwegian Church Council and others are calling on their government to withdraw from the project on principle.
Obviously it is easier to be critical of petroleum practices in another country but this case illustrates the comparative consensus in Norway around how their oil industry is managed. Put another way, when Greenpeace was recently handing out leaflets to workers outside a Statoil facility in Norway, the oil company graciously provided the environmentalists with hot coffee and sandwiches. Would this happen in Canada?
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