Norway embraces Chinese cash in race for Arctic oil riches
Norway embraces Chinese cash in race for Arctic oil riches
OMAR R. VALDIMARSSON and MIKAEL HOLTER
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (Bloomberg) -- Norway, western Europe’s largest crude oil producer, says it welcomes China as a partner in efforts to develop Arctic energy resources.
The Nordic country is doing business with China’s CNOOC Ltd. as it tries to find oil off Iceland’s shores. The Chinese company is also looking into exploring Norway’s eastern Barents Sea, an area where licenses will be awarded in 2016.
“China is one of the countries that like to participate in the north in cooperation with the countries that have sovereignty in the high north,” Norway Oil and Energy Minister Tord Lien said in an interview in Iceland on Nov. 12. “International cooperation on developing energy resources and other resources is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing.”
The welcoming tone comes amid a freeze in relations between China and Norway after the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. China reacted with anger when the Oslo-based Nobel Committee gave the award to political dissident Liu Xiaobo.
The world’s second-biggest economy is trying to gain access to energy sources needed to fuel its growth. Part of that plan involves the Arctic, which may hold more than 20% of the globe’s undiscovered oil and gas resources.
“We like to cooperate with oil and gas energy producing companies from everywhere in the world,” said Lien. “And if they are skilled and good at what they are doing, that’s what’s important for us.”
Policy Goal
Norway’s Conservative-led government, which won power last year, has made improved relations with China its top foreign-policy goal. The administration is doing what it can to avoid angering China further, including snubbing the Dalai Lama -- another Nobel Peace prize laureate -- during his visit to Norway in May.
The increased industrial cooperation will force contact between the authorities, said Arild Moe, director at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute, where he focuses on Arctic energy policy.
“The commercial interest for the Barents Sea could make more people in the Chinese leadership aware of Norway’s importance,” he said. “They already know that Norway is important in terms of energy supplies, but it could strengthen that understanding.”
State-owned CNOOC and its Canadian subsidiary, Nexen Inc., are looking into buying seismic data from Norway covering an area of the Barents Sea, according to a Sept. 30 email to the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. CNOOC also became a partner of Norway’s fully state-owned company Petoro AS in an exploration license off Iceland’s shores last year.
Lien said there are “good possibilities” of finding and producing energy resources also in Iceland.
“CNOOC is one of the companies that we do know have considerable skills in what they’re doing and, of course, we like to cooperate with that kind of a company,” he said.
