How Norway runs its trillion dollar state fund | DW News

norway ms a rich country it has a trillion dollars in the bank so to say that money was made from the country's vast oil reserves and Norway's sovereign wealth fund has become one of the largest single investors around the world but now the Norwegians have discovered their green conscience and have decided to pull many of its investments from companies who make their money with well oil and other fossil fuels that's a massive endorsement of green energy one could think but environmentalists are not happy the aim of Norway's sovereign wealth fund is to ensure responsible management of the revenue from the country's oil and natural gas sales for the benefit of current and future generations so what does responsible management mean the funds investments have become a topic of heated debate the Norwegian Parliament has barred the fund from owning stakes in a range of arms tobacco and fossil fuel firms it has had to sell holdings in hundreds of companies in a major divestment initiative some of those companies are coal producers either miners or power producers based on coal and for those ethical reasons close to 70 coal producers or coal companies have been excluded from the fountain that was in 2014 environmental activists at first welcomed the divestment by such a major player as a significant move towards responsible sustainable investing but some are now saying that it's premature for politicians to talk up the funds green credentials given that there's still such a long way to go the Norwegian government here is speaking with two tongues the Norwegian Prime Minister was telling last on the 24th of May while speaking in front of the climate striking school kids that what they that what the Norwegian government has done since the previous school strike was actually to divest 134 oil companies from the the state-owned puncheon pension fund she's talking about this in climate terms and and one could ask who is actually the boss and the person in charge here Environmental Protection may indeed be a concern but the funds core mandate is to preserve the wealth of the Norwegian people if the world turns away from fossil fuels holdings in those industries could collapse in value we are not aiming to send a message to the world we are aiming to take good care of the region people's savings and the aim of this process has been to reduce the overall oil price risk in Norwegian economy and that's that really this one is not an instrument of the inn or environment or environmental policy it's not an instrument of our foreign policy it's it's a financial instrument to take care of Norwegian people savings the sovereign wealth fund has far fewer coal companies in its portfolio now but it's keeping stakes and controversial fossil fuel giants like Exxon Chevron and Halliburton still involved in oil and natural gas exploration

Channel: DW News

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Keywords: norway, norway fund, oil fund, norway state fund, norway oil, norway oil fund, sovereign wealth fund, oil fund norway, norway oil reserves, norway energy, norway green energy, green energy, norway renewable energy, renewable energy, dw news, state fund, fund value, trillion dollar fund, wealth fund, largest fund

Id: dLZy4GUejU0

Length: 3min 18sec (198 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019