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Norway, Europe's oil powerhouse, decides when to end hydrocarbon extraction

2021-09-13T15:43:11.381Z


The country voted on a definition on Monday, with 2035 as a possible date. Contradictions of an environmentalist country.


Idafe Martin

09/13/2021 11:59 AM

  • Clarín.com

  • World

Updated 09/13/2021 11:59 AM

Norway, the largest European producer of oil and gas, goes to the polls this Monday to elect a new government and, above all, to choose

a key date

in the future of the country, the

end of hydrocarbon extraction

.

Conservatives and liberals, in the current government, do not want to set a deadline.

Social Democratic favorites do, although they are open to negotiating it.

His likely partners, the environmentalists, say they will only support a coalition if that date

does not go beyond 2035.

Ecologists repeat what the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, said when in August the world organization presented the latest report on the evolution of the climate: "We must put an end to all new exploration and production of fossil fuels."

Erna Solberg votes in a Bergen primary school.

Photo.

EFE

The conservatives found a supposedly environmental argument to defend that they continue looking for new wells to exploit.

They assure that Norway produces hydrocarbons

in a cleaner way

than other producing countries and that if it stops producing others will produce more.

The Social Democrats would prefer a government that would repeat the one that the current NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, led until 2013, and that they formed with two small parties: the agrarian and the Socialist Left, a smaller formation and something more to the left than Social Democracy.

But they may have to cling to environmentalists as well.

Even though it is the largest European producer of hydrocarbons, its weight in the world market is relative.

Norway produces 2% of the oil and 3% of the gas that the planet consumes.

Conservatives believe that suspending that production

"is not going to solve the climate crisis

,

"

as Tina Bru, Minister of Energy and Petroleum of the current Conservative government, said in the campaign.

Contradiction


Norway is the leading hydrocarbon power in Europe.

The country lives in the contradiction

of massively selling gas and oil and at the same time feeling that it must follow its environmental tendencies.

The climate crisis was the central point of the electoral campaign, above other issues that had dominated previous elections, such as economic policy or immigration.

Oil platform in the North Sea.

Photo: AP

National oil fund


Norway also knows that part of its well-being (its poverty rates are residual and its social services

very generous

) is due precisely to income from the sale of hydrocarbons.

These, in addition, feed the largest sovereign fund on the planet, which already totals

1.17 million euros.

The Norwegian economy has managed to make the ecological transition.

The vast majority of the oil and gas it extracts is not used in Norway, it

is exported

.

95% of the electricity Norwegians use is generated from

hydroelectric plants

.

Seven out of 10 new cars are electric.

Hydrocarbons, on the other hand, account

for 40% of total export earnings

, employ more than 200,000 people (7% of the total) and feed that sovereign fund that is a kind of pension money box for the future.

Norway sees Denmark take the lead.

Its little neighbor, whose production is much smaller and accounts for less in its total exports,

will no longer explore

for new gas wells and will stop extracting it

in 2050.

3.6 million Norwegians are summoned this Monday to the polls to elect the new Parliament and with it the future governing coalition.

Polls in recent weeks suggest that social democracy will once again be the leading force, but this time it will succeed, after eight years of governments under conservative Erna Solberg, to form an executive that could be joined by another small left-wing party and the environmentalists. .

The Social Democrats have never been out of power for so long since the 1930s.

His return to the government would also bring together four leftist governments in Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden.

If he can form a government, the next prime minister will be Jonas Gahr Store.

Brussels, special

ap


Look also

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Coronavirus: Norway ends the pandemic, but clarifies that in the world it has for "several years"

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-09-13

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