Oil, wealth and the pursuit of justice

War in Ukraine has earned the resource-rich Scandinavian country billions- and sparked debate over who should profit

- Philip Oltermann

As the sun plunges into the Oslofjord on a winter evening, passersby stop out-side Norway’s new €620m ($653m) national art gallery, the new €300m Munch Museum, the new €240m public library and the €550m opera house to take in the dying light.

Thanks to oil and gas reserves in the waters off its coast, Norway is extremely rich – and getting richer. Already the World Bank’s seventh wealthiest country by GDP per capita at the start of last year, the resource-rich Scandinavian country’s profits ballooned to record levels over the past 12 months, as prices on the energy markets tripled due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Norway replaced Moscow as Europe’s largest supplier of gas.

But the nation’s wealth can be an intangible affair. Hakon Midtsundstad, 33, his mother, Elin, and her sister, Berit, have stopped at the Oslo waterfront to marvel at the sunset. Asked if Norway is rich, they point at the architectural palaces around them. Asked if they feel as if they’ve become richer in the past year, the response is a drawn-out “Noooo”, followed by complaints about rising electricity bills.

As the citizens of Europe’s biggest energy producer experience their own cost-of-living crisis over winter, and Nato allies question the fairness of one state getting rich from others’ misfortune, Norway is debating where all its money should go – and whether one country should keep it all.

According to its finance ministry, the Norwegian state is likely to have collected almost 1,200bn Norwegian kroner ($1 19bn) from petroleum sales by the end of 2022, meaning Russia’s war has made every Norwegian citizen at least $21,000 better off on paper. Profits for 2023 are estimated to rise to €130bn, a five-fold increase on 2021.