Russia’s war in Ukraine has earned Norway billions – and caused controversy
s the sun plunges into the Oslofjord on a December evening, passersby stop outside Norway’s new €620m national art gallery, the new €300m Munch Museum, the new €240m public library and the €550m opera house to take in the dying light.
According to its finance ministry, the Norwegian state is likely to have earned almost 1,200bn Norwegian kroner from petroleum sales by the end of 2022, meaning Russia’s war of aggression has made every Norwegian citizen at least €20,000 better off on paper. Profits for 2023 are estimated to rise to €130bn, a five-fold increase on 2021.
Jan Egeland, the secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council and a former party colleague of the government leader, described the announcement as “a punch in the stomach” for a nation that is used to seeing itself as a beacon of international solidarity. But the inaction also speaks of a fear that debating the rights and wrongs of its petroleum profits could question a now widely popular system that Norway once took considerable political risk to implement.
“We have taken a temporary resource and created a possibly everlasting cash stream that can benefit future Norwegian generations”, said Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, a state secretary at the ministry of petroleum and energy. “Over time we have had wise and longsighted politicians who have managed the difficult balancing act between financing important measures in the short term while saving for the difficult days.
Just a 15-minute walk from Oslo’s opulent waterfront, a queue of people started forming outside Grønland Church on a dark and icy Wednesday morning. From 9am, the church opens its doors to those seeking warmth or a voucher they can redeem for a bag of groceries at the Fattighuset food bank opposite.
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