OSLO, NORWAY—Not wanting reports of the happy, healthy lives of its citizens to demoralize people living outside the Scandinavian nation, Norway announced Monday that it would start hiding its standard of living to make other countries feel better about themselves. “In an effort to not lord it over the rest of the…
All Nordic countries are built on that, Norway included. The Norwegian oil fund is rarely tapped into beyond a small fraction of the capital gains, although it did smooth out some 2008 financial crisis pains which hit Sweden harder.
Denmark has had some oil, but nowhere near what Norway did. Sweden has hardly had any oil reserves, nor Finland.
I’m aware that Norway manages its oil wealth extremely well. Probably better than any other country, which should be no surprise given it’s Norway.
But having an ENORMOUS bank balance does mean Norway can invest in projects and take up loans with extremely favourable rates.
Fun fact: Sweden was once offered half of the Norwegian oil in exchange for half of Volvo. Sweden declined.
In their defense, this was before we had any way to get the oil up from the bottom of the ocean, so Sweden was basically asked to gamble that there was a cost-effective way to do it.
I didn’t know this. Do you have a source I could read?
Volvo was not “offered half of Norway’s oil”. But there was indeed a large collaboration in the works. Norway would trade cash and the rights to three unprospected regions of the North Sea to Volvo, and would get 40% of the shares of Volvo.
The deal was declined by the Volvo general assembly. Even if it had been approved by the assembly, it would also need to be approved by the Norwegian Parliament afterwards, and it’s not a hundred percent clear that would happen.
Here is one article on the matter. It is a bit confusing, because the main proponent for the deal (CEO of Volvo at the time) says the deal would have been worth $85 Billion. While the main opponent of the deal thinks Volvo made the right call because only one of the three regions had gas, and none of them had oil. Both sources are biased though, so it’s a bit hard to know how true these statements are.
https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-made-85-billion-mistake-2016-6?r=DE&IR=T
So it’s true there was a major deal in the works which would trade rights to natural resources for Volvo shares. But it was a much more technical deal than simply “half of the oil for half of Volvo”.