Norway, Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer, has intensified lobbying at the European Union to persuade the bloc to remove or tweak its moratorium on Arctic oil and gas drilling.<\/p>\n
Norway, which is not a member of the EU but is the biggest gas supplier to European markets, has sent nearly a dozen of its ministers to Brussels so far this year to discuss energy and trade and the state of the Arctic drilling. The Iran war and the biggest oil and gas supply disruption in history have added to Norway’s arguments that Europe needs reliable supply from places outside of conflict zones.<\/p>\n
However, the EU’s moratorium enacted in 2021 due to the bloc’s climate commitments and environmental concerns, does not allow drilling in Norway’s northern parts of the Barents Sea, which is estimated to contain most of the remaining Norwegian oil and gas resources.<\/p>\n
\u201cNorway is very active and good at making its voice heard,\u201d the EU’s special envoy for the Arctic, Claude Veron-Reville, told Bloomberg in an interview<\/a> this week.<\/p>\n \u201cNorway knows very well how to intervene, they are very well organized and very present,\u201d Veron-Reville added.<\/p>\n Norway argues that an arbitrary line defining the Arctic area shouldn\u2019t be viewed as the cut-off line for oil and gas drilling.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no climate arguments for treating oil and gas produced north and south of a certain line differently,\u201d Norway\u2019s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told Bloomberg.<\/p>\n Norway\u2019s lobbying efforts clash with this week\u2019s call of dozens of Scandinavian financial institutions which urged the European Commission to remain firm in its opposition<\/a> to Arctic oil drilling even as the bloc could face physical oil shortages in weeks.<\/p>\n The EU could unlock 3.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of natural gas, or about 22 trillion cubic feet, if it rethinks its Arctic policy, Norway-based consultancy Rystad Energy said<\/a> early this year.<\/p>\n By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com<\/a><\/p>\n More Top Reads From Oilprice.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Norway, Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer, has intensified lobbying at the European Union to persuade the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[32191,31958,32190,39,32751,256,32752,40,32753,1417,119,22412],"class_list":["post-55592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-arctic-drilling","tag-arctic-oil","tag-barents-sea","tag-eu","tag-eu-moratorium","tag-european-commission","tag-european-energy-supply","tag-european-union","tag-iran-war-oil-disruption","tag-natural-gas","tag-norway","tag-rystad-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}