I can imagine a point in 30 years where there are new, safer and better ways of getting the oil out, and oil is necessary for processes that don't involve burning it into the atmosphere, and the price is considerably higher than it is now.
I despair of (my current home country) Australia's attitude of digging up all the resources it possibly can and selling them for cheaper than everyone else. And being proud of this, like it's a good thing. These resources are irreplaceable and belong to the whole nation. Maybe leave some in the ground for later when the prices have gone up?
As an Aussie that’s moved to Norway. I was shocked that the government here in Norway did the smart thing and monopolised the whole industry. Taxes are the same here in Norway as is in Australia, but it’s such a richer country. Everyone treats the oil money with such respect. We know that it came to us, and was temporary and instead of squandering this opportunity, it was done correctly.
> Taxes are the same here in Norway as is in Australia, but it’s such a richer country.
This is not a sensible comparison. Norway produces 313,661 barrels per day per million people, which is higher than all other countries besides Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Australia produces 12,010 bbl/day/millon-people, i.e., just 3.8% of Norway's per capita production.
The extreme amount of mineral wealth that each Norwegian citizen has inherited makes Norway very difficult to compare to non-Arab countries on any issue connected to economics (i.e., basically everything).
Relatedly, the cost of living in Norway is much higher than Australia, despite Australia's extreme remoteness.
Statoil makes huge margins on their oil because once the tricky rig was set up, it just comes out like Gold.
Most other natural resources have much thinner margins due to processing, overhead.
'Sweet Crude' i.e. the kind you get in the desert, and 'sweet once it's setup to be' i.e. Statoil ... this is a different thing together from other natural resources.
Norway is like Kuwait, it's almost impossible to compare it to anything else.
They can leave the Oil in the ground for now because they are very rich and have more money than they know what to do with.
You know what also comes out like gold? Actual gold :p
As far as I'm aware, profit margins on iron aren't too shabby either, though I'd have to do some digging how this all shapes up in these specific cases (Norwegian oil vs Australian gold, iron and coal).
The difference is not just profit margins, but very different capex and opex. Capex on oil rigs is large (especially offshore), but opex is pretty reasonable. I would imagine iron mining has much higher opex. A better approach it may be to loot at the graphs of average fixed/variable/total cost, which are very different.
I did, which is already reported further down in this thread, and my eyeball estimate was the Norway exceeded Australia per capita by more than a factor of 4. Happy to see more accurate numbers.
Sure. We're looking for something that's equivalent to Norway's oil industry. According to the links I gave, Norway's top exports are Crude Petrolium and Petrolium Gas, in 2017 accounting for 53% of all exports at $55.8B. Assuming a population of 5.3M, this translates to $10.5k per person.
Australia's top exports are also based on natural resources, namely, Iron Ore, Coal Briquettes, Gold and Petroleum Gas, accounting for 60% of all exports at $144.6B. Assuming a population of 24.6M, this translates to $5.9k per person.
Thanks. As discussed further down the thread, it is disingenuous to add natural resources to Australia's total but not Norway's total. (Metals and fishing are both 10% each of Norways exports.) This makes it 15.5k per person in Norway, giving a ratio of 3, halfway between the ratio I eyeballed (4) and the one you did (2).
As far as I'm aware, metals and fishing do not contribute to the Government Pension Fund of Norway, which is why I did not include them on the Norwegian side and similarly only looked at the top items on the Australian side (eg adding Refined Petrolium on the Autralian side would push the balance closer to 2 again).
Point is, while Australia isn't quite as well off as Norway, there are resources aplenty to pull off something similar on a somewhat smaller scale.
That may be your point, which is fine, but the original comment I was replying to was comparing the tax rate of Norway and Australia, and I was arguing this is not a sensible comparison in light of the much larger natural resource inheritance of Norway.
I think the original comment only really mentioned taxes in passing and then the discussion went off down a rabbit hole; but a wonderful rabbit hole in which each subsequent comment added more interesting and relevant information.
Fishing, unless you feel that the fisheries are being overfished, is in quit a different bucket because it's a renewable resource.
Metals is an interesting case because on the one hand they are definitely a non-renewable resource. On the other hand, it seems like there's a difference between exporting ore and exporting refined metals, in terms of whether it's "just" resource extraction or not...
you also have to look at extraction costs - Statoil is very high yield and low cost extraction which survives even the tightest OPEC squeezes.
Iron ore extraction isn't bad but it's nowhere near as profitable as Norway's oil extraction
You'd have to do that across the entire range of resources and then divide per capita - on that basis I think Norway would blow by 4x Australia just based on off-the-top of my head estimate
And by that I mean that Australia favours enriching corporate coffers over collection revenue from its natural resources so as to benefit the whole nation with a long term view.
I think the broader point is that by nationalizing a shared resource, Norway achieved an outcome that benefits their entire society.
They are fortunate that they are one of the few countries with functional government that could handle the oil wealth responsibly.
If you compare it to the United States, we socialize many of the risks associated with oil production, refining and transport, and let the extractors, refiners, and transporters reap the benefits.
There's no shared resource. It requires risky exploration and investment in extraction. Do you really think the 25m Australians can afford to gamble on hundreds of billions on LNG terminals? One bad investment or a big drop and the whole country is bankrupt.
Currently private sector and foreign business takes the risk. Then Australia gets a share of the profits through royalties and taxes as well as the labour income through employment of workers.
As another fellow Aussie emigrant (not to Norway though), I believe they were not only talking about oil resources but all the other natural resources Australia is selling.
My bet is Uranium is going to be an important one too in the future.
Uranium is actually quite common; it's cheap because it's an extremely controlled market (who are you going to sell it to?) with fairly limited demand (it doesn't take that much uranium to run a power plant or make a nuke, a cube about a meter per side can run a reactor for a year). Because it's so cheap, it's not substantially prospected so there is a good chance there are large reserves that can be exploited if we go looking for them.
And, if it comes down to it, we can pull near-unlimited quantities from seawater at $200-1000 per kg (~10x current pricing). The costs of nuclear power generation are almost entirely capital costs and insurance, the fuel costs are practically a rounding error, so this does not substantially change the costs of nuclear power generation.
So, uranium will probably never be super valuable. Strategically important, and nice to have in a conveniently accessible form, but not economically valuable.
Eye-balling the numbers, you'd pick up less than a factor of 5. I encourage you to look at the details and report back. You should also correct for the natural resources that Norway has the Australia lacks, like fish (almost 10% of Norway's exports inclusive of oil!).
Energy is about 50% of Norway's exports, and minerals + energy is about 60% of Australia's exports. These are extractive industries that are structurally similar.
Norway exports about $50 billion USD / year. Australia exports about $120 billion USD / year.
This is probably why the Australian is comparing the situation with Norway.
I'm aware that comparison he's trying to draw, but the comparison has to be fair. First, most obviously, Australia has almost 5 times the population of Norway! Second, if we're going to start increasing the scope of exports we're including, to make a fair comparison we should include minerals in Norway's total (not just Australia's), and we should really include other resources that Norway has that Australia doesn't (rather than just picking a category where Australia has larger exports). What are the numbers in this case?
Again, I think this works out to a per capita endowment of that is still much, much larger for Norway, but you'd actually have to do a bit of work to check.
IMO you're on a hiding to nothing trying to support your position that the comparison isn't valid. The economic export situation is structurally quite similar between Norway and Australia, and the difference in how they've handled it is vast, far greater than any multiple in population.
Huh? No one disputes that the countries handle things differently. But if you want to say that one way of handling things is better, and the only evidence you give are better outcomes, then inputs ought to be similar. But if one country has 30 times or 3 times the input (corresponding to oil or most natural resources, respectively), then this is a very poor comparison unless you do a lot more work to correct for it.
Here's a simple way of looking at it: Norway has converted its resources into a $1 trillion pot of funds, while Australia has, to a first approximation and over a longer time frame, zero or less (the country runs a budget deficit). So it doesn't really matter if the input is 3 or 30 times bigger if the function converting it into output is broken.
Next time, consider looking the number up yourself and reporting back rather than just asking the question and so forcing me to look up the answer for you (or else look like I'm ignoring the issue).
Fish being a minor part of Australian exports is a claim with absolutely no relationship to whether or not Australia has fish. You claimed it didn't, and that is not credible.
In context, my claim was clearly that Australia did not have access to fishing resources that had economic effects that were remotely comparable to its total exports.
An Australian's context here is that a minerals tax was proposed to build something remotely akin to the Norwegian fund, but was killed for political reasons. The key piece of the discussion for Australians is not the tax comparison or oil comparison that you've latched onto, but of a missed opportunity.
Where the Norwegians could appreciate what the sovereign fund meant for them, the attempt in Australia was lambasted as another tax, copped serious lobbying by mining giants, etc.
Granted it would have been nice to have a mining tax in collecting money for Australian social expenses.
However if they would introduce such a tax now then it might encourage new mining developments and let them be sped through the environmental checks faster than they are now. So there is a danger we would have many more Adani like mines popped up.
Though yet again maybe having a high enough mining tax would possible discourage such endeavours?
Now both countries do other resource-extraction stuff too. Norway's natural gas exports are almost equal to their oil exports, as far as I can tell. Australia's annual exports of natural gas seem to be in the $40-$50 billion range depending on the year you look at (it's grown a lot recently). And Australia is doing a bunch of non-iron-ore and non-gold mining too (gems come to mind).
Overall, per capita resource extraction revenue in Norway is certainly higher than in Australia, but it's not the "25x" higher than the oil numbers alone would indicate. Maybe 2x.
>313,661 barrels per day per million people.... Australia produces 12,010 bbl/day/millon-people
Would be way easier to understand the comparison if the notation would be the same on both numbers. I assume bbl means billions of barrels, this means Australia's number is higher by few orders.
They are the same notation, look it up. If Australia was producing 12,010 billion barrels of oil per day per million people you'd probably be able to see that portion of the globe turn black from space, everyone in Australia would have drowned in it and an oil tsunami would be heading towards New Zealand.
Diamonds in Botswana, Copper in Chile, farmable land in the US, etc.
The point is that Norway has managed it's natural advantages to the benefit all of their citizens compared to other countries whose resources primarily enrich individual companies/owners.
For this Norwegian expat, it's extremely hard to not see Australian politicians as corrupt - and inept, prioritising the wealth of the rich over that of the nation.
Canada did the opposite. Canada takes all the oil money for granted and basically has not used it to innovate anything. Instead, it's been drained by a few supposed elite that run oil companies and their cronies. The future of the oil provinces looks bleak.
The attitude of those in the oil industry does not help this at all. I work in oil and talking politics to those I work with just makes me sad. There is a lot of anti-government hate. People are still resentful about the National Energy Program and that ended 30+ years ago. Its kind of a mess.
I think its the notion that all the provinces are competing against each other, and that under any oil program some provinces will win and other lose that really holds us back. No one can see that we can all win by collectively working together. It doesn't help at all that there are now moneyed corporate interested involved that are not interested in seeing any changes take place.
Not "Canada", but the province of Alberta. Norway is a 'monolithic' country, but Canada has federalism where the provinces have jurisdiction over certain areas.
And Alberta did/does have a fund, but over the decades various governments (generally Conervative) have decided not to really invest into it:
Canada's oil is very different from Norway's oil. Tarsands are extremely energy- and water-intensive to exploit. This makes it far less economical of a resource than the North Sea oil produced by Norway.
Because Norway's oil is more profitable, it can be taxed much more heavily. If you were to tax the tarsands at the same rate, it would put the companies out of business.
Wasn't really what I was getting at... which is more in the lines of the oil industry is going the way of the dinosaurs we need to found some new industries with its profit in ordr to survive the next century. However, since you want to talk about it, oil companies fleece Canada as well...
"While royalty rates in Newfoundland are the highest in Canada, in Alberta they have fallen from a 40 per cent high during the 1970s to less than four per cent, and a complex system of exemptions ensures companies often pay even less."
What's even more amazing is that ~2% of Canada's GDP is oil, yet if you were listen to the braying of the oil companies, and their bought-and-paid-for stable of politicians, they make it sound like that number is ~25%.
We are literally bending over backwards to subsidize and prop up a rounding error in our economy.
It is around 25% of Alberta's GDP. Much of the service and secondary industries that derive profits as a result of that industry and are directly affected by it. So if that industry dies, there will be far reaching effects since there is nothing to take its place. The service economy which is a much larger part would be significantly effected.
And the population of Alberta is only ~12% that of Canada. It's addiction to oil is dragging the rest of the country down every time there's a drop in oil prices - as well as in our obligations to meet our carbon commitments.
Right now, 33 million people have to suffer, and pay more for energy, because one province is increasing its carbon output.
Edit: I am not a bastard, and I fully think that other provinces need to financially help Alberta disentangle itself from the tar sands. But it needs to be ready to accept this help, first.
If you listen to the rhetoric in Alberta, many Albertan's feels they are paying more than their fair share - there's talk this election cycle about somehow renegotiating the transfer payments. It's all talk about rolling back subsidies for alternative energy, and going even more whole hog into O&G. I'm an Albertan and I don't get it, I don't get it at all. I'll be voting for what seems to be the losing party this election.
> I'll be voting for what seems to be the losing party this election.
You might be surprised. Last election we saw spots of orange and red appear in what was once always blue. Demographic change appears to be moving against the Conservatives and the oil industry.
I'm hoping that's the case. I'm also aware that you have to say you're voting UCP in a lot of places in Alberta, or you'll be under intense social pressure. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised.
I don't think that's a completely fair comparison. Oceangoing drilling is dangerous and hugely expensive. Many many lives have been lost on North Sea rigs (as well as entire rigs, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.)
Okay. Comparisons of personal income tax in Norway usually come out very misleading, since personal income tax only accounts for around half of a person's total tax burden.
(For instance, there's a 14% employment tax, 25% VAT, car taxes that increase vehicle purchase cost by 100% and fuel cost by 200%, toll roads that are impossible to avoid during daily errands, 0.85% annual net worth tax, 31% capital gains tax, property taxes and municipal taxes, and that's without getting into extra taxes for luxury products or how corporate profits are taxed).
Everybody assumes that oil prices are going up. However, there are several large effects that could cause the price of oil to decline.
1. Economics predicts that the price of something will be the same as the price of its cheapest substitute. For a long time, fossil fuels were the substitute, keeping the price of renewables & nuclear down to unprofitable levels. However, renewables, storage and electric cars are all rapidly decreasing in cost, depressing their prices and the prices of their substitutes.
2. Carbon taxes or other similar schemes are looking more likely in the future. They shift the demand/supply curve, causing fewer barrels to be sold at higher prices, but the price doesn't go up enough to cover the full increase, leading to depressed prices before the tax.
3. Economics says that the price of a commodity is the same as the marginal cost of production. In other words, the highest cost producer of oil that meets current demand makes $0 in profit, all lower cost producers make >$0 profit. If demand is low, then that marginal cost is $10 Saudi oil. If demand is high, then that marginal cost is $100 Canadian oilsands oil. So if demand drops because of climate change mitigation and/or renewable substitution and/or electric vehicle substitution, there is supply of lower cost oil, meaning prices can drop.
4. We're not running out of oil, we never have been. As mentioned in #3, the price of oil is the marginal cost of production. Anything that costs more than that price isn't counted in reserves because it's uneconomical to extract. So by definition we always have almost no reserves and never will have.
There are trillions of barrels of oil in the Canadian and Venezuelan oil sands alone that aren't counted as reserves for this reason. We're less than 2 price doubling periods away from making this economical, keeping a fairly low ceiling on prices.
And of course technology marches on, continually decreasing the price of extracting that oil...
What's lost in your analysis is that oil extraction is becoming increasingly expensive. Magic tech isn't making it cheaper; it's making it viable at all.
Consider EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). This is how much energy it takes to extract a barrel of oil from the ground, whether by pumping or by melting in the case of tar sands and shale. In the 1950s, EROEI was about 100 - the energy of a barrel of oil could extract about a hundred barrels. The Canadian tar sands have EROEI of about 3.5. They weren't profitable until oil became expensive enough to make it worthwhile.
Once EROEI dips below 1, price is negative. It becomes impossible to extract the oil profitably. Some of those "trillions of barrels" you talk about are in that camp. They don't count as reserves, because they're useless.
Meanwhile, oil is going to keep getting more and more expensive and difficult to extract. Offshore deep-water drilling, tar sands, stuff like that, it's incredibly hard and often environmentally dangerous/destructive. And renewables get cheaper and cheaper, as there's a lot more room for improvement in technology and manufacturing scale.
Eventually - and I don't think that point is far away - it will be impossible to produce fossil fuels cheaper than the cost of solar/wind.
My "analysis" was purely one sided; I left it to others to argue the other side because I knew they could do it better than me. And lo, here you are. Thanks.
> Eventually - and I don't think that point is far away - it will be impossible to produce fossil fuels cheaper than the cost of solar/wind.
I hope and believe that you're right. But I don't think it will be because the price of oil is going up, but because the price of alternatives is going down.
> Once EROEI dips below 1, price is negative. It becomes impossible to extract the oil profitably
EROEI is not a constant, it changes with technology too.
And we'll still need oil for plastic, so it's theoretically possible that we'll use alternative energy to heat the tar to extract the oil to use it in plastic.
But woe is us if we ever get to that state. We'll have burnt so much oil that we'll be well past the climate change tipping point.
On the other hand, there's nothing magical about petroleum that can't be synthesized, given enough energy (electricity from solar/wind works), and simple water/CO2/etc to provide the building blocks for long-chain hydrocarbons. It's even more straightforward to start from cellulose or plant sugars.
I agree that for things like aircraft, there's unlikely to ever be an electrical substitute for the energy density of organic fuel. But that could be done entirely from renewables if needed.
>Once EROEI dips below 1, price is negative. It becomes impossible to extract the oil profitably.
This is not strictly true:
First, non-fuel use accounts for 5-10% of oil use.
Second: As long as oil offers higher-density (fuel energy, thrust-to-weight, &c.) mobile power generation than alternatives, it can be profitable. Id est: if it's cheaper to extract and refine a barrel of oil (perhaps with renewables) than to produce the equivalent biofuel, the oil could be produced profitably.
Brent crude, from the UK North Sea fields, is much lighter than Iraqi or Saudi crude. I'm guessing Norwegian crude is similar. Light crude is too "good" for fuel use; I believe it's used for plastics.
Eh. If it takes two barrels of oil to extract one barrel of oil, where do you get the energy for extraction? Then you're using solar/wind/nuclear to pump oil. At some point, it's cheaper to just synthesize.
Not the same. You don't use up the iron you mine in the mining process. That's what EROEI < 1 is, unless you get the energy input from some other source.
And since anything that's in petroleum can be synthesized from simple molecules like water and CO2, given enough energy...
>Once EROEI dips below 1, price is negative. It becomes impossible to extract the oil profitably.
Actually even 1 or 2 wouldn't make much sense. It was close to what people had in medieval times without oil (1.5 energy or something close, from animals, mills, fire, etc).
Let’s not forget that oil is not just used as an energy source. It’s the basis of plastics, drugs, cosmetics and many more things, not all of which have substitutes.
There is a good book about this that discusses the problem you just mentioned [1]. Not only do we need to find a way to replace oil as energy source we also need to find a way to replace it in all the other consumables. Or at least find viable substitutes.
And most of that is lubricants and plastics. I think we can all agree that reducing our use of plastics is generally a good thing overall - we might make the switch back to more easily recyclable materials, e.g. aluminum and glass, which, although energy intensive to recycle, are almost endlessly renewable.
Not sure what good substitutes for oil based lubricants would be.
> We're not running out of oil, we never have been
I mean, there are various ways to define what that means, but oil is getting increasingly expensive to get, alternatives are getting better, we may soon not have much oil left worth getting.
and of course we can bicker about what soon means.
Agreed. That is obviously a factor increasing oil prices, and may certainly more than balance the 4 factors I listed.
> alternatives are getting better
central to my argument
> we may soon not have much oil left worth getting
Oh I certainly hope so. I'm saying that we can't rely on oil prices going up substantially to ensure this. We need to invest in alternative energy sources and consumers and use carbon taxes to ensure it.
>We're not running out of oil, we never have been.
Actually we are consistently running out of oil, it being a finite resource.
You could say it's "enough for another 100 or 200 years" as opposed to those who say it's only enough for less, but you can't make it like we have infinite oil.
We chanced upon a source of relatively cheap energy that was created in geological time and takes millions of years to create. We didn't chance into some infinite tap.
>Anything that costs more than that price isn't counted in reserves because it's uneconomical to extract.
Beyond some point it would be so uneconomical to extract as to be meaningless -- or as to slow down the economy considerable, if it isn't for alternative energy sources (which also have their own problems if attempted at anything compared to oil use scale -- including storage, bad EROEI minus the subsidies, hidden costs, and unpredictable output, despite the solar cheerleading).
The Norwegians are using clean energy to produce oil. Wind, hydro, etc. are being used to power the pumps. Simlarly, Texas has huge investments in wind and solar and likewise the middle east is using solar installations to pump oil and gas. The economics for that are already such that that is cheaper. So, these costs are actually dropping: clean energy is being used to make dirty energy cheaper.
Climate change is very real on the North Pole and as a consequence, the US, Norway, Denmark/Greenland, and Russia are gaining access to new oil and gas fields that used to be inaccessible and are now being exploited. Particularly Russia is pumping out a lot of gas in that region and I'm sure Alaska is also doing well. So, there is indeed plenty of oil. But it matters whether you can sell it at 30$ or 100$ a barrel.
Another thing worth highlighting is that synthesizing carbo hydrates (aka. oil) from air is a feasible but energy intensive process. I.e. once clean energy prices drop far enough, that might actually become more lucrative than getting real oil/gas from the ground. Also a great way to store excess energy and you can do it anywhere. Like e.g. next to the refineries or pumps, thus cutting out transport as a cost factor.
It's really hard to imagine the scale at which we currently produce oil. In total we produce an average of 80.6 million barrels per day. This doesn't sound like a lot at first but consider that there are 159 liters of oil in a single barrel. When you work this out, it means that we are producing 1.7 liters of crude oil per person, for every man/woman/child on this Earth, per day - every day. Had to double check my math there, because that sounds so absurd. But it's correct! So to visualize that quantity imagine every single man, woman, and child on this entire Earth took a 1.7L beaker (about 5 cans of coke) full of oil, and emptied it out onto the ground. That's how much oil we produce, each and every day. Just stupefying!
The problem this reveals is that oil will only be valuable in the longrun if some technology is developed that requires just stupefyingly large quantities of oil. Otherwise, the supply is just far too high. And a catch is that even if this new technology is developed, it's difficult to imagine any usage where 12 billion liters of crude oil per day would not have a massive environmental impact, one way or the other. I would not go long on oil, unless you think it will continue to be used as a primary source of energy generation decades from now.
I see this attitude as reflecting the "terra nullius" origin of European colonization: Australia is completely empty and undeveloped (as long as we ignore the people who already live here of course!) so there are no consequences of our actions. Plus we're all far away from "civilisation", and nothing we do here interests people "back home" so presumably it doesn't matter what we do.
Add to that the unprecedented (truly unprecedented, world wide) growth of the economy (where "growth" is measured only against the things we choose to measure, i.e. GDP) thanks to being a mining colony of China and presto: we're great! A bunch of pollies were along for the ride while Chinese technocrats happened to channel a bunch of cash Australia's way, and decided that they were responsible for "success" they had nothing to do with. Why plan for the future?
I live now in the USA where the problems are really really bad. I still have hope that the lucky country will come to its senses. Australia has so much wealth to work with. Compare it to, say, Russia, also a primarily extractive economy: the two countries have roughly the same size of economy but Russia divides it over 5X the number of people, and has if anything an even less diversified, and far more corrupt economy.
I'd like to think since the land of Oz has a very thin ozone it is great for solar. As the cost of industrial batteries come down, this seems like much more of a sensible future. In the US, battery + solar/wind is just now becoming cheaper than building new coal / natgas peaker plants. This will only continue as the economies of scale and tech improvements drive the cost further down for renewables.
That they make most of their money in iron ore doesn't detract from their influence funding pro coal positions. The koch brothers don't limit their lobbying to industry directly relevant to their income
But if there are rolling blackouts during the summer, and giant batteries can mitigate blackouts, I don't see how her wanting to kill it is going to stop it. It is simply inevitable.
You assume that the ROI of oil will be more in the future. If Australia weren't a top materials producer the entire country would be poorer -now-. That oil money doesn't just evaporate, it reverberates through the entire economy and goes into other goods and services, which also grow. That economic growth will be better for the country, tenfold (and that's playing down the impact,) than just sitting on the oil and waiting for the price to go up...which it may never, due to dwindling demand and alternatives becoming cheaper.
I fail to see why oil reserves found within a nation's borders belong to them. Why is that oil Australia's do you think?
We the people of earth depend on the rainforests of South America. Does that rainforest belong to South Americans? If you think that, please state your reason.
I'm so sick of nationalism. Where are all the globalists?
Because that’s pretty much the definition of nation-state: control over a territory and what happens inside it. If you meant to ask why they should belong to the nation states, well, if they belonged to “humanity” someone would still be calling the shots, and there’s no guarantee it would be the Norwegians.
Here's a reason: some small populations like Norway and New Zealand are successfully going greener. This happens in part because our politicians are paying attention to their constituency.
It appears to me that many larger countries are not going green (in particular the US climate change denial) and part of the problem is that those at the "top" are very detached from those at the bottom.
Why would a single global political entity care more for the median person or the poor person? Care more for a forest, or a global oil company?
That would have to be Australia's call, as it's Australian territory (I presume). Norway can only walk away from drilling on Norwegian territory, which it did (or will do, nothing has been voted on yet in the parliament). The actual drilling is done by oil companies, and those who wanted to drill in the affected areas in Norway had no intention of any kind of walking.
>and oil is necessary for processes that don't involve burning it into the atmosphere
Modestly unlikely. The need for negative emissions will probably result in producing hydrocarbons from captured atmospheric CO2, which will be expensive, but not as expensive as paying whatever giant carbon tax will be assessed on geological oil.
> These resources are irreplaceable and belong to the whole nation.
I'm confused. (Libertarian here) Are mineral rights nationalized in Australia? How do they 'belong' to everyone there, as opposed to the person who owns the ground that those resources are in?
NB I've thought for a while that land 'ownership' is a slightly odd concept - not helped by being in Scotland where land ownership has had over a thousand years to get in a nice mess.
Would have a link or something to look up about Scotland's land rights being a mess? I realize I'm veering a little off topic here, but I'd be curious to learn more. I'd never heard that before
The existing solution of the state exploiting mineral rights to non-Aboriginal land and [at least theoretically] distributing their proceeds across the entire population, including those whose access to the land was taken, is probably less suboptimal than regarding mineral rights as 'belonging' to the person who most recently acquired the land title.
effectively, yes, mineral rights are nationalised.
when you buy property in Australia, that does not include the mineral rights on that property, which are a whole separate thing. Farmers have got rich selling access to mine sites, but only the government can sell the mining rights (for the first sale anyway).
I think you were emphasizing the participation part? And I agree, but curious to where do you draw the line on what constitutes participation?
Some argue simply paying taxes. Others say it is a list of things perhaps, called "civic duties". Finally, some more extreme believe you have to do it all: attend the town halls, keep up with the times, understand the various debate points, otherwise you are somehow disqualified from playing. (A side note, it has become impossible to keep up with all the ways government affects your life, and this is one of the exact reasons the founders were for limited government. They argued as the responsibilities and roles of government increase, it becomes impossible for the "commoner" to keep up and stay engaged, thus becoming a form of tyranny in of it's own.)
I think it's definitely a gray area, but the more participation, obviously, the better, while still somehow maintaining the ability to serve those who participate little just as equally. Otherwise you become a government of some people, not of all people.
I generally agree with libertarians in that people should not be overly taxed when they create a house or plant a crop. But in this case, the person who owns the land did not create the natural resources. So no, they should not be entitled to it. Also the current public is not entitled to it either. Future generations need to be considered as well.
There are actually far more practical reasons for public management of oil and gas resources. The reservoirs are huge and span more than a single owners private property. In order to harvest efficiently you may require coordination or non local maxima decisions to improve overall production. Otherwise you'll leave the majority of the resources in the ground with no way to get them out
Private entities manage to coordinate across the globe to build hugely complex products, from extraction of resources to manufacturing, assembling, distribution and retailing, and you think reaching an agreement between a few land owners is too much for it?
I can't help but being impressed by Norway and the decisions they have made in regards to their oil.
It would be very easy for the country to rely on their oil only, and forget about everything else. But instead, they realise the importance of renewable energy and try to build a sustainable future.
They have an Iraqi immigrant [1] to thank for their far-sighted policies. Farouk al-Kasim moved to Oslo in 1968 for family health reasons and was in the right time and place to help steer Norway's national policy toward unexpected oil wealth shortly after.
(Edit: link to article below doesn't work well through Google indirection ... And search for original at Financial Times website is paywalled ... apologies ... search for article title "The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil", you'll find a readable link.)
I hate to be cynical, but isn't this decision made also because oil prices are very low now? It's not as low as in the '60, but adjusting for inflation it is not that much higher. Norway is a very small country in terms of population, it does not need much oil for its own needs so it makes perfect sense to keep it for times when prices will go up.
More to the point, they've managed their oil money differently, investing it in various things. They have state philosophers on board to help invest. The country itself is relying less and less on oil - lots of hydropower, for example, and lots of encouragement to buy an electric vehicle and/or take the bus.
They've had help: Others responding along with you mentioned an Iraqi that has helped them.
The fund itself is pretty amazing. It might even be more of a blow to see the fund shrivel up than the oil, honestly.
No, a majority of the big political parties are for oil exploration in this area, including (until very recently) the Labour party. The reason they have done a 180 on this and blocked the proposal for oil exploration there is because of pressure from the youth wing of their party, who are vocally against it and have been so for decades. There is no grand calculus, just a political reality. In fact part of the labor party is very upset because some labour organizations have been in favor of oil and gas exploration there because of the jobs it would bring.
The population of Norway is smaller than the city in which I live. I would say the city in which I live often teeters between sustainability and the opposite. Is there some limit to human organization scale where we can be effective?
Countries like Japan and China are much bigger and yet pivot on a dime politically when there's consensus. China went all-in on coal and when things got so bad pollution wise, they went all-in on solar.
It's not a limit on population size, it's a limit defined by political cohesion. Look at the US today with two parties, one center-right wing, one extreme right wing, where they can't get anything done because one party would rather shut the country down than negotiate.
They've tried to build a sustainable future? The majority of their economy has for decades been built around enabling the rest of the world to burn fossil fuels. Now, much later, with large and well-managed cash reserves from said activities, they're exporting less oil than physically possible. Thanks Norway.
One huge caveat is that divestment from oil / fossil fuels is in no sense a moral, ethical or socially responsible act, yet lots of organizations (like famous universities or the Norway sovereign wealth fund) try to play the divestment card to curry goodwill and social signaling.
The reason divestment is not “morally good” is that the current price of the assets reflects the net present value of all future cash flows for those assets. So if you choose to sell and materialize those assets as cash today, you’re just expressing a preference for cash instead of oil assets, but are not fundamentally signaling anything about the future cash flows. Particularly if you are realizing a profit in cash from having held those oil assets for a long time.
If you wanted a divestment-like action that could possibly be considered a morally good stance on climate change, then you should give away your assets to groups of people likely to receive direct negative externalities from continued operation of the oil industry. Liquidate your position in oil and give away that cash to coastal property owners, developing countries, laborers or communities exposed to environmental damage. After all, it has been your choice to hold those assets and act as a shareholder demanding increased value (which you received) that has been a huge reason for environmental damage in the first place.
Any possible way of realizing a capital gain from that environmental damage you incentivized with your shareholdership is at best nothing but everyday financial activity and at worst greed.
I can’t stress this point enough, that merely divesting and realizing capital gains from selling out of your oil asset position is emphatically not a moral or ethical stance on that industry, not an attempt to migrate to renewable energy, nothing.
Divestment is literally nothing but realizing a profit from capital gains in one particular way.
The public moralizing about it, I think, is just a way to let rich people have their cake and eat it too, because the yes-man thing they want to hear is that there is a possible way to extract big profits from oil investment while at the same time promoting migration away from fossil fuels. But you can’t.
Or everyone could stop pumping oil _right now_. Economics are great and all, but economics is an abstraction layer on top of production - and the economics that we use today are basically spaghetti code on top of production.
The largest issues if we were to stop oil production immediately wouldn't even be monetary, they would be ethical, as it would massively reduce food production and distribution.
Basically, Norway is working closer to the hardware when they stop oil production.
I’m only discussing divestment. There are plenty of other things worth pursuing and Norway is doing well in many of them. I just think it’s important to get the story straight on divestment specifically.
People made huge sacrifices in World War II to stop an imminent threat. They stopped driving. They stopped leaving the lights on. They cut back on everything.
We don't have to do anything that extreme now, but give it another twenty years and we'll have to do a whole lot more than that.
Hurray! The labour party (finally) voted against drilling for oil outside Lofoten, Vesterålen and Senja, in the very north of Norway, near to or above the arctic circle.
This has been a long fight for the enviromental lobby.
But really, it should have been obvious.
We _know_ that if we want to limit global warming, we can't even extract all the oil from currently developed fields.
In addition, an oil spill outside Lofoten could devestate the cod population of the north atlantic ocean, and destroy industries both in Norway and elsewhere.
This is actually excellent news for America's drillers, as reduced global supply will bolster prices and motivate more drilling in the U.S. And that is all this Norwegian decision will actually do: move production from one place to another. The people of Texas, North Dakota, Alaska, and a few other states, extend their thanks to the Norwegian parliament.
Sure, in the short term, it will not have much effect apart from
a) protecting the sensitive environment around the Lofoten islands
b) increasing the cost of oil slightly
c) leaving the oil around Lofoten for future generations if necessary
All three are quite positive effects of this decision, with a+c) being more limited to Norway and b) potentially having an effect world-wide. It will also make it easier to tax "dirty" oil imports (such as from sensitive natural environments) and all goods produced using such oil into the EU if no internal player is doing the same.
The other side of this being that we want oil to be drilled in the jurisdictions with the best environmental protections. Grading aside, a barrel of oil from Alberta, Texas, Niger, Venezuela, or Norway all carry different environmental costs.
In that regard, I think Norway not drilling may be a net loss for the environment since they have some of the better protections. It may even be a net global loss, even if it means a localized win.
The combination of people fighting oil production in their own countries while making very few meaningful changes to their consumption patterns is a massive example of NIMBYism
While the average consumption of a Norwegian is still too darned high, Norwegians have certainly been changing their consumption patterns in the last years:
One factor is that the price of gas is about $1.6/L (~$6/gallon), while electricity still is very cheap. Most people also don't generally need to drive all that far, so a shorter-range electric car is perfect for daily driving. There are TONS of Nissan Leafs out here in the suburbs where I live. In 2018 the Nissan Leaf was the most sold car in Norway.
Buying an electric car in Norway also gives you much more than just tax savings (but they do have a lot of those). You don't have to pay road tolls, you can use the highway lane reserved for taxis and busses, you can park and charge for free in government provided parking spaces, you have 50% off tickets for ferries, cheaper mandatory yearly road insurance, and some shopping centres previously had free charging while you shop.
The right to drive in the bus-lanes was changed to only with at least one passenger during rush-hour, as they became so clogged that busses were stuck in traffic as well. The free road toll will be changed to 50% off this year, and the exemption from sales-tax is up for review in 2020. The free charging on government provided parking will be limited to 4 hours this year, and a fee per hour will be introduced. You can still park for free though, but those spots with charging stations are too popular.
Could be, but given the much larger influence that the state oil company Equinor (previously Statoil) exerts on the government, I'd not think it's likely.
Code blocks don't wrap and are limited to a very narrow width on mobile, making prose difficult to read. I suggest putting each list item in a separate paragraph instead of using code blocks.
It potentially means fewer people will need petroleum fuels.
Petroleum fuels are only the only game in town for some of their applications. For everything else, raising or lowering the price relative to the alternatives will cause switching to or from petroleum fuels. This is going to be lagging (because there are usually capital costs associated with the switch, so it doesn't make sense to switch if you won't recoup the expense, so the fuel cost difference needs to be substantial), complex (because the switching will actually be based on the perceived future price difference, not the current price difference) and somewhat sticky.
It's also noteworthy that this has been the policy of the current government for the last two periods, but it's good that arbeiderpartiet finally landed on this too as it cements the decision.
It's also worth noting that these rigs would be much closer to shore than the current rigs outside of the west coast. I would be able to see the rigs from Lofoten where much of my family is from although I don't live there myself. For me personally putting up rigs would have been a disaster even without the oil spills.
In the first month of my fourth year since I chose to live by another environmental value of not flying -- which has become one of the best decisions of my life by improving it beyond any expectations -- I look forward to more nations, organizations, and people choosing similarly.
More of us keep finding that unquestioned following the values of a system created in ignorance that we could lower Earth's ability to sustain human life and culture doesn't make us happier.
Taking responsibility for how our behavior affects others doesn't sound as much in-the-moment fun as most of the crap that burning fossil fuels does, but it builds community, personal growth, and enduring emotional reward.
I used to crave eating mangoes in the tropics and seeing as many of the world's sites as I could. Now I see the bigger issue wasn't the mangoes or sites, which were passing fancies, but the craving, which the oil industry shows in the article. Life in service of others, compassion, responsibility, and such outweigh whatever profits they get abandoning them.
I can give their past generations of pollution the benefit of the doubt for our collective ignorance. The evidence of the result of their craving is overwhelming now. I hope they escape that craving in favor of responsibility and humanity before my home, and the homes of billions of others, is underwater.
I’m utterly unconvinced that meat eating is inherently bad for the environment. The initial studies decrying meat production were fatally flawed and had to be withdrawn.
Better animal husbandry is needed, but not mass scale conversion away from meat.
>> The initial studies decrying meat production were fatally flawed and had to be withdrawn.
Source for this claim, please?
I too think that there is a lot more that should be done to safekeep the environment that sustains us before we have to stop eating meat altogether but I have never before heard that particular studies were "fatally flawed" and were withdrawn.
I can’t find the source I originally had for the paper being withdrawn, but it looks like one of the original authors believes that the paper was flawed.
The original article claimed that eating meat produced more CO2 than driving, but they used the wrong methods to compare the two.
For meat, they measured lifecycle emissions. Everything involved in raising, transporting, slaughtering, and processing meat was measured. I think this is a fair measure.
For transport they only measured tailpipe emissions, which is deeply misleading. You need to include the cost of oil discovery, refining and transport, plus the emissions of steel and concrete production for cars and roads. The actual tailpipe emissions of a car is a small fraction of its emissions, which is why buying a used ICE vehicle is greener than buying a new EV.
The summary, not the body of the paper, claimed that meat production accounted for 18% of emissions, more than transport, both statements appear to be wrong. Transport is actually 26%, and meat is closer to 3-4%. In America meat production and grain production have roughly equal emissions, with meat producing 42% of our overall agricultural emissions.
There are for certain things we can do to manage land, manure, and water better. But I believe that focusing on reducing/eliminating meat is misguided.
It's the right decision. If we keep extracting every last drop of oil, the effects of climate change are going to irreversible (see https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/09/tipping-...). If less oil is extracted, the price will go up, and that will hasten the transition to renewables.
It's not only that. Consider that the fish export of Norway is huge, compared to almost everything else (although oil is still in its own division). More importantly, export of fish from the area discussed has been going on for more than a millenium and can likely continue for another, or more. Unless a disaster happens, and one would be a huge oilspill in the middle of that area, which could destroy the fisheries for generations. Compare that to just a few decades of oil, and the latter doesn't look so important (economically) anymore. This part is what concern those who are against oil drilling there, even those who are not particularly concerned about CO2.
Yes. On the other hand, other countries with oil have not saved their oil profits, choosing to spend them on a massive military (US) or trivia (Saudi Arabia building fancy cities in the desert).
This is our kids earth. I think my kids are smart and I know they will demand change. I will be at their side. The time to make sacrifices is now and this makes me look towards Norway with envy that they would choose environment over money. Good job. Climate change is real.
Anyone who just walks outside and treasures their surroundings and the environment understands this point. People who want to drill for the short term view don't see the beauty they are destroying for lifetimes ahead of us.
Problem is, it might be too late. The time is indeed now, and yet the countries best positioned to make the change (both largest polluters per capita and richest, so able to make the sacrifices) are pretending the problem does not exist, for the sake of short-term profits for a selected elite.
I find this incredibly depressing. Should I teach my daughter to ski? Is it going to be of any use in 20 years?
The post title gives the impression that parliament have decided permanently to never refine oil in the area. That's misleading. The Norwegian Labour Party has decided for the time being to not support the preliminary processes needed to start potential oil production in the area. The significance of this being that the power balance in parlament has shifted for the time being. However, this can change in the future!
It's pretty depressing to think of all the extremely talented people working their socks off to find oil fields, directed to do so by fools who don't realise we can never safely use them. It would be much better if they were working on sustainable technologies instead.
You say that like "not now" is "never". What is depressing is that people would rather let the tragedy of the commons and collapse play out at full speed, rather than giving ourselves a chance at achieving better sustainability.
I think we agree? There's a huge amount of effort being spent on extracting fossil fuels which will destroy our planet which could reasonably be used to develop sustainable technologies instead.
We don't want to burn even all of our existing already-being-extracted oil fields, but chances are we'll always be extracting some oil.
So what's the highest quality, cheapest to extract, least environmentally damaging oil we could extract? Should we extract as much oil as we can from our current fields or shut them down and go elsewhere? Should we drain any field we are using completely dry or should we just take some from a lot of sites before shutting each down? Is it better to frack site A or put a deepwater rig at site B or a conventional well at site C?
I could imagine a golden future where petroleum is a relatively minor but important resource, and where all the exploration now is a valuable dataset for deciding the most ethical way to extract it.
Once we're no longer burning gasoline, oil may no longer be the cheapest carbon feedstock (presently the economies of scale in refining make chemical plant oil cheaper). Maybe instead we will be pulling the carbon out of the air like plants do, or using plants to pull the carbon out of the air.
People get all activist about supply (drilling, pipelines), but the only way to affect emissions is to change demand. Stopping one point of supply just diverts demand to elsewhere.
It shifts the supply curve left. It is hard to emphasize how valuable that is. It:
1. Raises prices or decreases total used
2. When prices are raised, encourages alternatives
It is similar to a carbon tax in its effects. Look at the diagram in the article and visualize the S curve moving left, and what effect that has on equilibrium.
Here is the thing: the US will be net energy exporter by 2021. As of now it is self-sufficient. At the time when we put such a emphasis on using less fossil fuels, we also have more and more countries producing the stuff.
All it did (Norwegians not drilling) is raised prices for the oil exported by the US. Thank you! Recently it has been very cheap. Hopefully this will help a bit.
So that's global perspective.
The local perspective I'm happy that Norwegians are so wealthy they don't need to drill as much anymore or can focus on other issues then providing to the Sovereign Fund. Good for them!
AFAIK Americans already don't plan to leave oil in the ground if it's economical to get it out. They can't drill more if they're already going to drill it all.
Actually supply isn't that flexible to pick up such changes. The middle east has the ability to ramp up production. But its capabilities are limited. If a country like Norway would stop production we'll most likely see a significant rise in prices (making alternative fuel sources more interesting).
The problem is exactly with the demand for cheap energy. If the whole western world becomes carbon neutral we'll simply see the oil getting exported to other countries. There's plenty of margin for it to remain profitable.
I disagree, in the end the only way to affect emissions is leaving oil in the ground, demand be damned.
Oil is easy to obtain and contains an amazing amount of energy in fluid form, can also be used for plastics and many other things. There will always be demand for oil, it's almost magical. We must still leave oil in the ground.
Great decision by Norway. I hope this (and other decision that'd follow suit elsewhere) would precipitate the R&D and subsequent implementation other energy technologies. And that the existing oil drilling could be left for using oil in petrochemical products instead of as a energy resource.
With luck this will be the start of a process that works out what to do when oil is no longer a profitable business. It was good while it lasted and Norway managed it much better than any other country in my opinion, with care it can last a while yet but inevitably things will change.
We need to work out what we will do to maintain our lifestyle without the oil income, if not then Norway will slowly drift back to being a relatively poor country. Norway is an expensive country to run, not just because we have high incomes but also because quite a lot of the landscape is quite hostile to life and unproductive both industrially and agriculturally. The population is too small to make mass production of low cost export goods practical and raw materials are expensive to extract and refine so we will have to become more self reliant. Historically Norway has been good at this but recent governments have started to be less and less interested in solidarity and more interested in market ideology.
For me it is probably not a particularly pressing problem, I'm 63, but my children will certainly be affected.
The way Norway's oil fund works makes these decisions easier.
All the oil money goes in a sovereign wealth fund. 4% of the fund's value per annum is taken as government revenue (like tax). So, any new oil found will only gradually increase budgets in the future. Also, the can stop drilling now and the annual revenue just stops growing (unless the market). It doesn't shrink.
Finally we're seeing some reason! It seems that not all of humanity is stupid enough to go straight for self-extinction. The problem is, while Norway does this, there are other countries (ahem, the elephant in the room) and multi-national corporations that plan to increase oil production massively in the coming years.
What Labour actually decided against was not oil exploration, but rather a konsekvensutredning, or an investigation into the possible environmental and social effects of oil extraction in the area. Which is in many ways a more radical position, as they are not even interesting in finding out what possible damage oil production might cause. They're rejecting the preliminary step before oil exploration, which is in turn the preliminary step to actual oil extraction.
Of course the current government never had any plans to conduct any preliminary steps. The two major parties (the Conservatives and the Progress Party) are all for it, but the minor supporting parties (the Liberals and Christian Democrats) are not, and so far they've gotten their will.
Sure, so then since the pendulum has been on one side (polluting the world with fossil fuels) for so long, let's swing it over, in order to be "balanced", and ban/eliminate fossil fuels as soon as possible, hopefully in the next 10-20 years.
... and welcome recession like we've barely known before. You won't power the supply chain urban cities rely on with PV / wind alone. Crop will suffer, and a lot of people will die, those in cities first.
Dumb question, but when temperatures in 2050 / 2100 hit 3% over pre-industrial levels, what happens to Norway's climate? Will they, as well as the huge sovereign wealth, also land up in a nice temperate country with green and pleasant meadows.
If warming does reach that level then yes, there has been some research finding that it would be overall be good news for Canada and Russia (and presumably Norway too).
Their climate will get nicer, but almost all of their major cities are located on a coast. So rising oceans will cause mass displacement of their citizens.
We tried to have a peak oil in the 70's and 80's and we got improved catalytic cracking processes (google zeolites), and I believe we also got sideways drilling and (someone with a better memory, help?) ground penetrating radar during that era.
So we located more oil, we could get more of it out of the ground, and more of it made it to your gas tank.
Since then people have made the zeolites many times larger in diameter. I've no idea why that improves efficiency but that's the claim.
However through all of this the amount of energy to refine one gallon of petroleum has gone up and up. That's one of the complaints about tar sands. For some of those the yield is a 10:1 ratio (one gallon to produce 10), whereas we used to be many multiples of that ratio.
There's a Netflix series called Occupied based on the premise that Norway stopped producing oil & gas for environmental reasons. I watched a few episodes before getting distracted, as you do with Netflix.
"Occupied depicts a fictional near future in which Russia, with support from the European Union, occupies Norway to restore its oil and gas production, in response to a Europe-wide energy crisis caused by the coming to power of Norway's Green Party, which stopped the country's oil and gas production."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied
Big fan of that show. Somehow it seemed very realistic to me, despite a few exceptional plot points that are acceptable in a TV show. I watched most of the first season all in a weekend and at one point forgot it wasn't happening in real life.
Opinions aside, it is interesting to consider what issues might arise if one country or industry abruptly chooses to leave behind non-renewables before its peers.
If history teaches us anything, it's more likely that the US would intervene against Norway to privatize its oil market with the "help" of US companies. But being a quasi-EU country and NATO member that's still a very unlikely scenario.
I loved the show, and Russia was obviously a metaphor for the actual nation that invades for oil on a regular basis. There really are some things you can't say and get a TV show made. This is irony: speaking two messages to two audiences.
Of course, there's also an audience for unflattering caricature of Russia. Besides there is some leftover animosity from historical invasions. Also a Russian invasion looked more exotic on the screen. Our screens are already full of American culture.
ZOMG I had never heard of any of these events of the last several years! The news media has failed me by only hyping this kind of thing 23 hours a day! What good fortune that I've had this opportunity to learn from you! Now I will support all of our meaningless unnecessary wars, starting with Venezuela where I'm assured that there really is an actual "humanitarian crisis"!
Actually this wasn't a geopolitical point. It is simply a fact that Russian food, music, and other cultural indicators are less common on TV than American culture is. So, it makes for more interesting TV. That's all "exotic" meant.
> When America invades with the intent to steal a country, let me know.
Most of the USA outside of the founding states was stolen by invasion, including the overseas territories. (Though some of it was covered by purchases made possible by invasion, or under threat of invasion, or from people who claimed most of the covered territory despite not actuslly effectively controlling it while other people lived on it.)
1. Before the legal concept of a nation-state, all countries were formed via conflict. Every.single.one. What's your point?
2. Overseas territories are more complicated, most have semi or fully autonomous status, while others voted to maintain their formal status with the US. If any wanted full independence, they would be granted it. Ukraine voted to increase trade relations with the EU and was properly invaded and had partially annexed. How you can even begin to compare the two, I have no idea.
Why would the US annex a country if it's easier to install a US-friendly government and set up a number of large contracts for US companies? Overseas territories are a liability and the last thing you want is more citizens who might have their own ideas about how the country should be run.
0. That's the number of oil contracts US companies received in Iraq post invasion.
The US acts recklessly and causes much misery and death through its actions. It don't invade places with the intention of occupying and steal land/resources.
This is a good point. MIC pretends sometimes that they're trying to help out oil exploitation, but in fact they're only about turning blood and tax dollars into profit. Many of the people actually fighting as well as the morons who keep voting for the fighting don't understand this, however.
"When America invades with the intent to steal a country, let me know."
Because invading oil-rich countries, installing a puppet government, seeding chaos leading to deaths of hundreds of thousands of people is so much better than bloodlessly reuniting with a piece of your own territory stolen during the dissolution of the USSR.
> reuniting with a piece of your own territory stolen during the dissolution of the USSR.
LOL. The Soviet Union was an empire forged through invasion, occupation, and brutal repression. The Russians have as much right to Czechoslovakia as Nazi Germany did.
Your unapologetic defense one one of the greatest evils of the 20th century would be funny, if it wasn't disgusting.
Calm down there, fella. Crimea isn't the same thing as Slovakia and Czechia; they are separated by nearly 1000 miles. Crimea really was part of Russia from 1783 to 1954. Its various political associations since 1954 hardly constitute "one of the greatest evils of the 20th century".
Ex-Soviet states didn't choose a "political association" as you say, they were invaded and brutally occupied in an attempt to erase their existence.
Nazis get the proper context in 20th century history, the Soviet union sadly doesn't. If you were here defending Hitler's invasion of Poland i'd image the response would be different.
If you really intend to suggest that these two "invasions" are substantially the same, then you should introduce actual arguments to that effect, rather than whinging about the fact that no one simply agrees with your novel historical opinion. If this was merely a poorly chosen example intended to buttress a general hate-on for Russia, I would suggest you research more on the 'stans, since the overall area dwarfs that of USSR's European adventures. With all that area, we can be pretty sure that a Stalinist authoritarian state got up to all sorts of evil shit. (One issue might be that this wouldn't be well represented on Wikipedia, since it concentrates on white people history.)
"Specifically", USSR was a Stalinist authoritarian state. Is this controversial?
I merely encouraged GP to research the evil shit, because it might offer some sorely needed rhetorical support for his Russia animus. I don't care one way or the other about it. "Governments are evil; news at eleven!"
Do Texas, California, Hawai'i, Puerto Rico, and Guam fit in your "carefully" calibrated category? That's not even counting the American Indians who inhabited most of the rest of what became USA before Europeans got here. We held on to Philippines for a while, too. What point do you think you're making with this line of argument?
Ah we're going back before the concept of nation states, huh? That's a reach.
Well, in that case almost every country in the world needs to be re-partitioned and given back to indigenous populations, most of which are long since wiped out.
All to justify Russian invading Ukraine. What happened 2 years ago is the same as the carnal free-for-all that was pre-modern civil society. Well done, wasn't expecting that.
When you're just typing rather than thinking, you'll be surprised by lots of logical objections to your babbling. The 19th and 20th centuries are the late-modern period, not the pre-modern period. Most of the Russian Empire was accumulated during this period if not before. It would not be reasonable to rule 19C American actions out of bounds while condemning 19C Russian actions.
I never mentioned 19th century Russia. Invading to occupy, oppress, steal, and subjugate is 20th century Russia, no need to go back any further.
As I said before, justifying Russia acting like a medieval power in 2018 by citing American expansion in 1850 is just stupid. It's whataboutism but not even logical.
You might have thought you were being clever by blurring the distinction between Crimea and certain European nations, but everyone in this thread has seen through this. Crimea was part of Russian Empire from 1783. That's a long time ago.
You would have been fine if you just stopped with "Russia has invaded other nations". That's simply true. This "Russia invades more nations than USA" is obvious bullshit. Even the TV news admits that.
As recent as 2016, middle-eastern migrants have been illegally funneling through the borders Russia has with Finland and Norway.
A quick look at Google Maps should raise suspicions, because migrating from Syria to Europe via the Russo-Norwegian border is the most ridiculously convoluted path to take. I believe it to be impossible for large number of migrants to accomplish this feat without official help from the Russian government.
Hi there! As a Northern Norwegian who recently moved south, here's the benefits for living in the most northern area, Finnmark:
Student loans:
Everyone who lives and work in Finnmark and/or North-Troms can have a yearly, tax-free, writedown of student loans based on 10% of the original loan sum. Maximum of 25.000 NOK per year.
Less tax:
Everyone living in Finnmark and North-Troms that pays taxes gets an automatic writeoff for 15.000 (tax class 1) / 30.000 NOK (tax class 2). They also have a tax rate that's 3.5% less than the rest of the country.
Exemption for electricity charge:
Pay 9.5 øre less per kWh, also the whole of Northern Norway doesn't pay VAT on electricity.
The official reason is to get people to live there. Most of the infrastructure is down south, so there's little benefits to living way up north except never seeing the sun. More and more people are moving away from the North, so the local government there wants that to change.
They indeed entered Norway through Russia but the reason is that Norway has (had?) much more liberal policy in regard to middle-eastern migrants compared to the EU countries that already had enough of them. I doubt there were many.
The specifics of the plot aren't realistic, Russia invading a neighbor with the idea of stealing land and resources while brutally oppressing its people has great precedent.
"The specifics of the plot aren't realistic, Russia invading a neighbor with the idea of stealing land and resources while brutally oppressing its people has great precedent."
Thank you for multiple examples of russophobia you have provided in your comments.
What precedent are you talking about?
In the recent history the only territory that joined Russia is Crimea which historically has been Russian for over 200 years and was assigned to be a part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic during Soviet time when all republics were parts of the same country and it didn't matter much.
After an illegal coup in the Ukraine 'midwifed' by the US it was a strategical imperative to take the peninsula back and nobody is brutally oppressed, in fact, according to Gallup's poll almost everyone in Crime approve reunification with Russia [0].
If anything, the Crimea was stolen by the Ukraine during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and was finally returned to the country it was a part of for centuries.
As for Russia-Norway relations, Russia has given Norway a part of the Barents Sea in order to settle 40 years old territorial dispute [1] which makes your claims even more absurd.
I can imagine a point in 30 years where there are new, safer and better ways of getting the oil out, and oil is necessary for processes that don't involve burning it into the atmosphere, and the price is considerably higher than it is now.
I despair of (my current home country) Australia's attitude of digging up all the resources it possibly can and selling them for cheaper than everyone else. And being proud of this, like it's a good thing. These resources are irreplaceable and belong to the whole nation. Maybe leave some in the ground for later when the prices have gone up?