Word: oil
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...Norwegian continental shelf for almost all their output; last year that area off the country's north and west shores accounted for more than four-fifths of the two firms' production. That bounty has made this nation of just 4.6 million people rich. Government taxes on the country's oil business--Norway is the world's fifth largest exporter by volume--have helped bloat Norway's national pension fund to around $350 billion. But those good times couldn't last forever. With fields beginning to dry up, oil production has slid to 2.6 million bbl. a day this year, from...
...outside Norway, the competition is fierce. As the world's demand for energy swells, petroleum-pumping countries like Russia and Venezuela "are asserting a higher degree of national control over [oil and gas] developments and leaving less room for non-national companies to participate," says Peter Mellbye, StatoilHydro's head of international exploration and production. While key Middle Eastern nations have long held their domestic oil companies and development projects in a tight grip, a more protectionist stance among energy powers elsewhere has, Mellbye says, "fundamentally changed the picture...
...trends toward consolidation and nationalization, in fact, helped drive the Norwegian merger. To a government or national oil company looking for overseas partners to help exploit domestic resources, seeing two Norwegian firms, both largely state owned, jostling for the same openings could be "confusing," says Mellbye. "They thought there would be some political preference given from the Norwegian authorities, and then on that basis they could make a choice," he says. "But that was never done." The two companies began negotiations late last year, and when in December they brought their merger proposal to the government, it was quickly approved...
...what the Norwegian firm lacks in size, it could well make up for in expertise. Many onshore reserves, which are relatively easy to exploit, are being depleted. So Big Oil is being forced offshore into increasingly complex projects, often at great depths and in harsh conditions. "Each barrel of oil produced tomorrow contains a higher degree of R&D than a barrel produced yesterday," Reiten, a former Norwegian Minister for Petroleum and Energy, told TIME a couple of days before his resignation. With StatoilHydro's decades of experience operating in the tricky terrain and climate off Norway's coast...
...April 1980, oil prices went stratospheric, peaking at about $100 a barrel, adjusted for inflation. Some of the causes might sound familiar. Constantly rising demand. Political crises in Iran and Iraq. Uncertainty about the extent of future reserves. And, of course, the edgy enthusiasm of commodities buyers, whose fears drive up the price...