But more specifically to this post, the UK and Norway both discovered oil in the North Sea around the same time and took very different approaches to hope to manage this new resource.
Norway treated the oil money like communal property and heavily taxed oil production. Norway used the taxes to further develop oil drilling and exploration technologies, so that they would still have access to harder to reach reserves in the future BUT more importantly the oil taxes had to benefit Norway as a whole after the oil is gone.
The most obvious result of this is the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, which is basically an endowment with the intent to continue to improve the lives of all Norwegians for future generations. Norway uses the dividends from this massive investment portfolio to continually support the welfare state reducing the tax load on its citizens.
The UK, under Thatcher, just used the oil taxes to cut taxes elsewhere. The problem is, the easy to reach oil is long gone. The new technology to reach remaining oil reserves is increasingly expensive AND there’s no more oil money coming in. So now services are being cut and some politicians want to privatize others to make up the funding gaps.
There’s plenty of other factors at play, but at the end of the day the UK took a short term economy approach while Norway took a long term communal approach to the same scare resource at a similar point in time. Norway is still seeing the benefits to their approach while the UK has nothing to show for theirs.
Norwegian production peaked at ~300,000,000 barrels per year, the UK peaked at 140,000,000. Today, Norway is at 190 Mbpy and the UK is at 50 Mbpy.
The UK has a ~12x larger population than Norway. That’s 25x to 45x higher production per capita throughout the entire time the North Sea has been exploited.
That’s all true. However, USA peaked production in 1970 at 9.6 million barrels per day (~3,500,000,000 barrels that year). Their production is predicted to peak again in 2027 above this prior record.
The US population is roughly 5x larger than the UK, but also produced 10x as much oil as them.
The US national debt… $38 trillion USD and predicted to be growing faster than GDP sometime this year. They have famously pathetic social services for their citizens and are reducing services, coverage, and safety-nets every year. The UK’s (with less oil money and fewer citizens) are better.
This problem has nothing to do with the amount of oil generated nor the amount of citizens in the country, and all to do with taxing finite natural resources significantly (Norway) and investing the taxation in a well-regulated manner for the good of the people (Norway), rather than letting billionaires strip the resources for a pittance of taxation (US, UK), living off debt to bankers (US, UK), and privatising your social services (US, UK).
It also only worked because Norway didn’t get invaded because of this approach. Plenty of countries tried to keep valuable natural in national hands, they get sanctioned to oblivion and then the CIA conducts a coup.
It’s kinda is yes.
But more specifically to this post, the UK and Norway both discovered oil in the North Sea around the same time and took very different approaches to hope to manage this new resource.
Norway treated the oil money like communal property and heavily taxed oil production. Norway used the taxes to further develop oil drilling and exploration technologies, so that they would still have access to harder to reach reserves in the future BUT more importantly the oil taxes had to benefit Norway as a whole after the oil is gone.
The most obvious result of this is the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, which is basically an endowment with the intent to continue to improve the lives of all Norwegians for future generations. Norway uses the dividends from this massive investment portfolio to continually support the welfare state reducing the tax load on its citizens.
The UK, under Thatcher, just used the oil taxes to cut taxes elsewhere. The problem is, the easy to reach oil is long gone. The new technology to reach remaining oil reserves is increasingly expensive AND there’s no more oil money coming in. So now services are being cut and some politicians want to privatize others to make up the funding gaps.
There’s plenty of other factors at play, but at the end of the day the UK took a short term economy approach while Norway took a long term communal approach to the same scare resource at a similar point in time. Norway is still seeing the benefits to their approach while the UK has nothing to show for theirs.
Norwegian production peaked at ~300,000,000 barrels per year, the UK peaked at 140,000,000. Today, Norway is at 190 Mbpy and the UK is at 50 Mbpy.
The UK has a ~12x larger population than Norway. That’s 25x to 45x higher production per capita throughout the entire time the North Sea has been exploited.
That’s all true. However, USA peaked production in 1970 at 9.6 million barrels per day (~3,500,000,000 barrels that year). Their production is predicted to peak again in 2027 above this prior record.
The US population is roughly 5x larger than the UK, but also produced 10x as much oil as them.
The US national debt… $38 trillion USD and predicted to be growing faster than GDP sometime this year. They have famously pathetic social services for their citizens and are reducing services, coverage, and safety-nets every year. The UK’s (with less oil money and fewer citizens) are better.
This problem has nothing to do with the amount of oil generated nor the amount of citizens in the country, and all to do with taxing finite natural resources significantly (Norway) and investing the taxation in a well-regulated manner for the good of the people (Norway), rather than letting billionaires strip the resources for a pittance of taxation (US, UK), living off debt to bankers (US, UK), and privatising your social services (US, UK).
It also only worked because Norway didn’t get invaded because of this approach. Plenty of countries tried to keep valuable natural in national hands, they get sanctioned to oblivion and then the CIA conducts a coup.