[HN Gopher] Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)
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Farouk al Kasim saved Norway from its oil (2014)
Author : DevOfNull
Score : 95 points
Date : 2023-04-19 18:36 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (psmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (psmag.com)
| omegaworks wrote:
| Farouk certainly played a role, but I long to see an expose on
| the backchannels between elites during this period. It seems the
| great powers of the Global North wouldn't dare attempt to
| destabilize and usurp one of their own sovereigns.
|
| People are too quick to blame "state-owned monopolies" when the
| development and success of any producer is dependent on the
| gatekeepers of the global oil marketplace.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The problem now is that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is
| deeply tied to the US economy.
|
| I don't understand why we Europeans are so invested into the US
| economy when every American on twitter/reddit is saying the US
| dollar and economy is about to collapse. They might be wrong and
| are probably wrong but it is still incredibly stupid to invest in
| a country when its own citizens think it will collapse in a year
| or two.
| Mizza wrote:
| Stupid use of funds for the most part, it's not re-invested in
| the country, just the American stock market. It's not like they
| had to buy solid gold rolls royces, but there's no reinvestment
| internally other than oil and fish. Norway is a hedge fund with
| the F-35.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I suspect that the people arguing here that Norway should
| direct that huge volume of money internally are not Norwegian
| residents. Those of us who live in Norway, most of us anyway,
| recognize that doing that would be a disaster and would just
| fund short term spending and fuel inflation.
|
| The UK and the Dutch just spent the money they got from the
| North Sea oil and at least the UK has little to show for it.
|
| Anyway, the Norwegian economy is doing just fine without it, we
| bounced back from COVID faster than practically everywhere else
| and everywhere I look there are new commercial and industrial
| buildings going up.
| haasted wrote:
| They're probably trying to avoid some of the economic mistakes
| made by the Dutch when they started producing natural gas:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
| matsemann wrote:
| Using it internally would not be a good idea, though. That
| amount of money fueled directly into the economy would make our
| inflation even worse than it is.
| Mizza wrote:
| I think this really highlights the attitude - don't invest
| money because it might harm the money. Money is for putting
| in foreign assets, so that rather than a large amount of
| money now, you can have a small trickle of money later.
| jonsen wrote:
| If there's will and ability to pay back.
| vidarh wrote:
| Rather so that you can have the "small trickle"
| perpetually.
| Mizza wrote:
| Yeah, countries always have this, they're called
| taxpayers. If you invest in them, they can pay you more
| taxes than you put in. If you make their lives good, then
| people can even make _more_ people! Instead, Norway
| invests in American businesses in order to get that slow
| trickle, so instead of investing in their own people and
| industries, they have a slow trickle which can gives
| pension to a population in decline.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Maybe that's the real nub of the "resource curse"-- any
| effort to improve the lives of its citizens will be wrong
| and bad, so just invest in foreign assets and otherwise
| preserve things as they are.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Nasruddin was riding his donkey to the market, with his
| son walking along beside him.
|
| As he passed a group of travelers going in the opposite
| direction, he overheard one of them saying "look at this
| cruel old man, riding in comfort while his son has to
| walk." Caring very much for the opinion of others, he got
| off of the donkey and told his son to ride.
|
| He passed another group of travelers, and overheard one
| whisper "look at the silly old man, walking his life away
| while his young, strong son rides in comfort."
|
| He tried riding behind his son, but overheard people
| criticizing his cruelty towards the overburdened beast.
| He tried having them both walk, and was criticized for
| not realizing that donkeys could be ridden.
|
| Finally, in frustration, he ordered his son to help him
| carry the donkey. As they both struggled to lift the
| large and uncooperative beast, another group of travelers
| approached, staring at him in confusion. Before they
| could say anything, he shouted at them "Shut up, I don't
| want to hear it!"
| vidarh wrote:
| Investment within Norway is high enough that putting more
| in would drive inflation, at which point you might as
| well be burning the money, so it's a balancing act.
|
| And the notion that improving living conditions - Norway
| is already at or near the top of nearly every quality of
| life measure - increases fertility is directly the
| opposite of real life global trends.
| Mizza wrote:
| It's too exhausting to keep going. It's essentially a
| religious belief here, for some backwards reason a nation
| of mortgage holders is fervently obsessed with keeping
| inflation down and making money by investing in anybody
| but themselves. If you point out this might not be an
| optimal medium term strategy, somebody will pull out a
| list, point at somewhere near the top and say hey, we're
| doing better than Sweden.
|
| It's good. I think it could _amazing_ if some of the
| political orthodoxy was reexamined.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| You seem to have a religious belief here too, that the
| average Norwegian resident can be arbitrarily improved by
| spending more money on them.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I wish my country would make "stupid" investments to the tune
| of $250,000 per citizen set aside for a rainy day (or decade).
| Mizza wrote:
| It's better than the poke in the eye, that's for sure, I just
| don't think it's optimal and I'm tired of the way this story
| gets trotted out every now and then. I think there's a middle
| ground between solid gold rocket cars and rainy-day
| austerity. Norway is quite under developed in many ways, many
| services you'd think would be better just aren't, once the
| oil gets switched off they don't have much modern industry as
| an alternative, which wouldn't be the problem if they spent
| some of the money to diversify.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > many services you'd think would be better just aren't
|
| Perhaps you could enlighten us about which services are
| lacking and how they are so much better in those countries
| that just spent the North Sea oil revenue internally?
| Mizza wrote:
| Today, I'd pick Posten. It seems like you're a proud
| nationalist and I don't want to start a fight.
| [deleted]
| ubercore wrote:
| Posten is a mixed bag. Ease of access at places like
| grocery stores, and general service is great. But
| delivery can often be weirdly delayed. Sometimes we get
| notice of bills _after_ they're due. But overall, I
| prefer it to the US postal service I'm used to, so it
| doesn't feel like a slam dunk example to me.
|
| Spend some of that money on training and paying more GPs,
| and you'd have my interest...
| Mizza wrote:
| Maybe I'm just really unlucky, and I didn't really want
| to get into that guy about wait times at hospitals or
| whatever, but I find Posten to be just _spectacularly_
| and often hilariously terrible.
| ubercore wrote:
| PostNord is about a million times worse for me.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Oil's far more likely to _taper_ off. A trillion dollars in
| the bank will cushion that transition quite well.
| outside1234 wrote:
| > without trashing the environment
|
| without trashing the NORWEGIAN environment, but let's not
| whitewash over all of the CO2 they have unleashed on the world.
|
| More generally, I think it will be interesting to see what
| happens next with Norway - while they have avoided the principle
| resource curse - what happens when all of these oil jobs
| disappear (10% of direct employment and probably up to 25% in an
| indirect sense)?
| 0xDEF wrote:
| The intentional conflation of localized environmental pollution
| and the GHG damage to the global climate is something many
| Westerners do. That is how they have deluded themselves into
| thinking dirty streets in India is a bigger problem than
| Americans driving F150s.
| DevOfNull wrote:
| [dead]
| js2 wrote:
| Two previous discussions from a 2009 ft.com article titled "The
| Iraqi who saved Norway from oil":
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19594153 (347 points, 129
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28780108 (115 points, 81
| comments)
|
| Original 2009 article:
|
| http://archive.today/2022.06.15-104752/https://www.ft.com/co...
| tpmx wrote:
| Disclosure: I'm a Swede who previously worked in various
| primarily Norwegian-owned software companies for two decades. I'm
| mostly happy about how it went. I also got some insights about
| Norway along the way via the 100+ trips to Oslo during that last
| decade when I had an engineering management role. That travel
| schedule was exhausting.
|
| My pet peeve about Norway and oil: How very few people ever call
| them out on being the Saudi Arabia of the north (well, minus the
| murders/various other kinds of oppressions).
|
| They do so much (excellent!) PR that shows them being the
| ethical/environmental leaders.. that totally ignores the fact
| that they are the people making money on pumping old fossil
| remains out from their seabeds. If they really meant it, they
| could, like.. stop doing that? I mean, pick a lane.
| hkon wrote:
| Disclosure, I'm a Norwegian. Saudi Arabia of the north. Well.
| Actually I think Sweden might be a top contender for that name.
| [deleted]
| tpmx wrote:
| Please do elaborate. (Here's some rope I found laying
| around.)
| matsemann wrote:
| I'm Norwegian, and I agree. We have deluded ourselves to
| believe our oil is "clean" and "green".
|
| And while stopping the pumps would probably wreak havoc on our
| economy, we could at least stop looking for new fields while
| emptying the ones we have for some more years. So slowly wean
| off the oil tit. But every time that's suggested, the
| government says "develop, not stop". And use straw men like "we
| can't stop abruptly!!", even though that's not the suggestion
| on the table. And they've used the same excuse for a decade to
| not do anything. If we actually started transitioning away from
| oil a decade ago, we would be better off. And if we at least
| started now we would be better off. But that can just gets
| kicked down the road.
| tpmx wrote:
| You mean to say Norwegians in general actually think the
| Norwegian oil is "clean" and "green" just because the
| operations to pump it up are? I mean, brain-washing can be
| effective, especially when there's a financial motive to
| believe it.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I agree, and have noticed that discrepancy, but I guess it is
| better than double dipping - profiting from environment-
| destroying products, and then investing those profits into
| environment-destroying products.
|
| I can't really blame the Norwegians though - even if they care
| about the environment greatly, it would be hard for anyone to
| have a lifestyle based around their $250k income and to go back
| to a lifestyle based around having more normal $50k income.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| What do you plan to use instead of fossil fuels today?
| tpmx wrote:
| In Norway and Sweden (shared grid): Primarily electric hydro
| + nuclear power. Wind power adds to the mix when it's windy -
| and it often is.
|
| (Here's the complete picture regarding the grid:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta.
| ..)
|
| There are power cables between RG Nordic and RG Continental
| Europe/RG Baltic/RG GB but to my knowledge they are all via
| high voltage DC - so not AC phase synced.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| Is that deployed infrastructure today to handle needs and
| scaling for the future? I know Germany was cutting back on
| nuclear.
| tpmx wrote:
| I think we're getting a bit off-topic here, but in a
| nutshell: The current government of Sweden wants to build
| new nuclear power plants to scale up the power supply for
| the future.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| That's good to know. Thanks!!!
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| well today I learned something interesting: Norway and
| Sweden aren't on the big grid that covers most of Europe.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Here's a bonus: western half of Denmark is on the
| continental europe synchronous grid and the eastern half
| is on the Nordic grid.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| at least the whole country is nominally ~220 VAC 50 Hz
| though right? Not like Japan with different frequency
| standards.
| matsemann wrote:
| We (Norway) do have cables connecting us to UK and
| Europe. They've been a hot topic the last year with the
| high energy prices. We're making bank on selling our
| hydro power when gas got scarce. But that skyrocketed our
| own prices.
|
| It's a difficult topic. It's probably a net win for
| Norway, as we can produce when price is high, and stop
| our hydro and import when prices are low. The problem is
| just that the benefit ends up making the government and
| the electric producers (again owned by government orgs
| mostly) rich, but us people have to pay more for our own
| energy use. So using that extra money earned to help the
| people is needed.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I would assume those cables aren't frequency synchronized
| however, they are either a HVDC cable or have DC
| interconnect somewhere so that the grids aren't frequency
| synced.
| kzrdude wrote:
| IMO Sweden and Norway need to separate domestic and export
| electricity prices so that they can come back to having
| cheap energy as a genuine advantage for its industry.
| pydry wrote:
| It really is amazing that there is a list as long as your arm of
| economies dominated by natural resource extraction for whom it
| has been a curse.
|
| And then there's Norway. The sole exception.
| scythe wrote:
| Chile hasn't done half bad either. It's perhaps worth noting
| that Pinochet -- neoliberal reputation notwithstanding --
| didn't undo Allende's nationalization of the country's copper
| mining industry:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codelco
| jutrewag wrote:
| Not sure what you mean. The Middle East is making out like
| bandits, it makes a sizeable percentage of the GDP in south and
| East Asia etc. it just feels like you're putting Norway on a
| pedestal for no particular reason.
| preommr wrote:
| The difference is where the money goes. You can point to any
| country that scores high on corruption index and go "well
| actually, these people made out like bandits".
| jutrewag wrote:
| The Middle East is very rich with a very high standard of
| living. A lot of those countries have no income tax and
| basically free medical and utilities. Much better than what
| Norway offers.
| whinenot wrote:
| Is the standard of living really much better in the
| Middle East than what Norway offers? I haven't seen any
| exposes on modern slavery in Norway like I have on the
| Middle East fiefdoms, but maybe those canny vikings are
| just better at hiding it?
| ubercore wrote:
| I think the recently cancelled au pair system was as
| close as Norway got.
| whinenot wrote:
| I wasn't aware of the issue but after reading some news
| articles, it fully aligns with my impression of Norwegian
| living standards.
| esotericimpl wrote:
| [dead]
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