Norway announced approval of 19 oil and gas projects off its continental shelf today, dismaying environmental campaigners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Petroleum and Energy Minister Terje Aasland said the 200 billion kroner (\u00a314.6bn) investment would be \u201can important contribution to Europe\u2019s energy security,\u201d helping reduce dependence on Russian imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Norway, western Europe\u2019s only net exporter of oil and gas, saw its revenues from the fossil fuel exports more than triple in 2022 to 1.5 trillion kroner (\u00a3110bn) compared to 498bn (\u00a336bn) in 2021, as sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine led to soaring prices and rising demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The country was accused by US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh<\/a> of involvement in a US project that blew up the Nord Stream pipelines from Russia to Germany, cutting off the possibility of a trade-based rapprochement between the two. But it denies seeking to profit from the Ukraine war, pointing to its role as one of the biggest donors to the Ukrainian government internationally \u2014 though a five-year support package of 75bn kroner agreed in February is dwarfed by the rise in energy revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mr Aasland said last month Norway would \u201cleave no stone unturned\u201d in seeking new oil and gas fields to tap and would offer a record number of Arctic exploration blocks this year, claiming it was the country\u2019s \u201csocial responsibility\u201d to maintain production levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The assertion prompted environmental groups Friends of the Earth Norway, WWF-Norway and Greenpeace Norway to condemn the plans<\/a> as \u201cembarrassing\u201d and \u201ca middle finger to the Paris agreement.\u201d Greenpeace Norway\u2019s Frode Pleym told US broadcaster CNBC that Norway\u2019s \u201caggressive and greedy\u201d attitude amounted to \u201ccynically exploiting Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ukraine war has disrupted multiple countries\u2019 climate change commitments, with Germany reactivating coal-fired power plants to make up for reduced Russian gas imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regulation of mining and drilling in the Arctic has also suffered, following the decision by seven members of the eight-member Arctic Council \u2014 the US, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Finland, Denmark and Canada \u2014 to b<\/a>oycott it due to Russia\u2019s involvement a week after the invasion of Ukraine began<\/a>, suspending the only multinational body supervising activity in the Arctic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Norway announced approval of 19 oil and gas projects off its continental shelf today, dismaying environmental campaigners. Petroleum and Energy Minister Terje Aasland said the 200 billion kroner (\u00a314.6bn) investment would be \u201can important contribution to Europe\u2019s energy security,\u201d helping…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":619,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions\/619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}