Why Norway is Becoming the World's Richest Country

in terms of people Norway is a pretty small country home to only about 52 million individuals to put that into perspective Norway has fewer people than many of the world city states do such as Singapore's 6 million people or Hong Kong's nearly 7 1.5 million people but while small in people Norway is very large in land the country has about 385,000 Square km worth of overall land roughly 140 times larger in geographic area than Hong Kong and roughly 464 times larger than Singapore despite having a fewer number of people than in either put another way Norway's Geographic size is also roughly equivalent to Japan's and both countries have a similar amount of mountains that cover them and yet Japan has 22 times more people living within its similar mountainous area than Norway naturally this makes Norway one of the most sparsely populated and overall empty countries in the world with the lowest density of people that can be found anywhere in Mainland Continental Europe with the northern half of the country stretching beyond the Arctic Circle in the Far North with a very thin layer of top soil above Bedrock the land of of Norway is mostly harsh mountainous rugged and very cold with a short growing season an environment that doesn't lend itself very well to sustaining large numbers of people only 2.2% of Norway's land is even considered aable and suitable for agriculture one of the lowest percentages in the world and roughly equivalent to Yemen's percentage a mountainous country in the Arabian Desert without even any rivers that's widely regarded as a failed State this ultimately means that despite having 385,000 km of overall land only about 7,124 square kmers of Norway's land is suitable for agriculture a poultry amount that is similar to the amount of arable land found in El Salvador a country that is 16 times smaller than Norway in overall land but which has a similar population of about 6.3 million people because the two countries have a similar amount of aable land that they can actually use to sustain their populations with and then to make matters even worse for Norway their small amounts of varable land are scattered all throughout the south of the country in small valleys in between all of their massive mountains which has always made the creation of large integrated and efficient farms in the country impossible with its vast and wide open expanses of varable land all throughout the country the average Farm size in the United States is more than eight times greater than that in Norway as a result and so American Farms are more integrated more efficient and more productive as a result and can simply feed many times more people because of these inherent disadvantages when it comes to agricultural potential there have been expectations and assumptions made by people all throughout Norway's history that the country should naturally be poor or at least that Norway was historically a poor country until the sudden discovery of oil changed everything in the late 1960s and paved the way for Norway's currently well-known Prosperity but the interesting truth is that oil didn't actually make Norway Rich it just made Norway even richer than it already was beforehand contrary to popular belief Norway has been a relatively wealthy country for most of its entire history and it almost counterintuitively has to do exactly with the same geography that makes the country so terrible for agricultural production there are other Geographic factors that can determine the fate of Nations Beyond agricultural potential and one of the biggest others is how easy it is to travel around the country's territory and conduct trade transportation across Norway by land however has always been very difficult for thousands of years before modern highways and tunnels traveling along the Norwegian West Coast on foot or horse was basically impossible because of the omnipresent steep mountains and deep FS that carved all across the landscape but this seemingly Geographic first actually turned into one of Norway's greatest Geographic blessings and disguise because of all the jagged fjords located all throughout the Norwegian Coast Norway is generally regarded as having by far the longest coastline anywhere in Europe with a coastline that's more than 6 and 1 half times longer than the United Kingdom according to the CIA World fact book in fact Norway's coastline is considered to be so enormous because of all these fjords that it's ranked as having the second longest coastline of all the countries in the entire world remaining only behind the number one spot spot of Canada this is always meant that as Norway coalesced into a modern nation state its small population was always scattered in small clusters all throughout the mountains and the fs separated from one another across land not too unlike other mountainous societies like Afghanistan or Persia but unlike those societies deep within the interior of Eurasia the small scattered population clusters across Norway all had easy and immediate access to the global ocean because of all of the fs that cut deep into Norway's interior this geography encouraged a maritime culture to developed within Norway from very early on and the fs granted the Norwegians the ability to rapidly travel between each other's settlements by sea moreover the fs enabled easy access for Traders to penetrate deep into the country's interior and get close to one of Norway's greatest natural assets its huge forests and lumber resources Norway has never had the largest forest in Europe it's beaten out by many other countries with larger ones like Russia Finland Sweden and even France but for centuries all throughout the age of sale before the development of railroads unlocked Russia's Lumber potential Norway's Lumber industry was the biggest in Europe because of how much more relatively easier it was to access their forest in the interior through the fs and exported to markets Norway's Lumber could be felled within the interior then cheaply and efficiently dumped into rivers and floated Downstream toward the settlements and Sawmills along the fjords where Sawmills powered by those same downhill rivers and their waterfalls would refine the lumber and the lumber could then be cheaply exported out through the fs and onto the global market and so until the later 19 18th century when railroads fully unlock the lumber potential of European countries with larger forests like Russia Finland and Sweden these relative Geographic advantages made Norway the lumber Powerhouse of Europe for centuries and the country's Maritime culture enabled it to build out a worldclass merchant Fleet by the time that the 20th century rolled around Norway already had the fourth largest Merchant Marine Fleet in the entire world the nature of Norway's well connected but spread out in lowdensity population also encouraged two things one the communities were all connected to each other by the fs and by the Sea which led to a common identity emerging between all of them despite their mountainous geography and two Norway's small population clusters learned early on to cooperate together on ship building and construction for all of their common benefit entire Norwegian towns would cooperate together on the construction of ships that were vital for all of their survival and shares in the ship's ownership would be divided amongst nearly everyone in the town who participated from The Lumberjacks to the Craftsmen over time this resulted in a much more spread out in decentralized distribution of wealth and ownership in Norway in addition to the spread out and decentralized population and so a large centralized and Powerful class of capitalists never really developed in the country the same way that they did elsewhere in places like France and Britain with their populations and economies both largely concentrated around their political capitals Norway's geography conversely forced its people to trust each other and to cooperate on building the ships that were vital to their survival and so early ship building in Norway was largely Cooperative in nature and then that influenced the country's economy for centuries afterwards through to the present day as Norwegian agriculture forestry Maritime insurance and fishing all became dominated by cooperatives while the Norwegian banking sector throughout the 19th and 20th centuries became effectively dominated by Cooperative Credit Unions as well across the 19th century then when Norway was widely believed to be a fairly poor region Norway was actually already doing very well for itself in relative terms by the 1850s Norway's GDP per capita was already higher than basically the entirety of Eastern Europe exceeding that of Bulgaria Romania Poland Hungary and Czechoslovakia and by the 1880s Norway's GDP per capita had eclipsed virtually all of southern Europe too including Portugal Spain and Greece while by the turn of the 20th century in 1900 it had even surpassed that of Italy and then by 1938 on the eve of the second world war decades before the discovery of oil in the country Norway's GDP per capita had already exceeded those of Germany France and the United Kingdom and by some estimates it was already the wealthiest country on average in Europe a huge part of the reason why Norway's economy accelerated so rapidly between 1900 and 1938 was the Advent of modern advanced water turbines and hydroelectric dams that completely revolutionize Norway's Geographic potential even further Norway is a land that is almost completely covered by rivers that begin high up in the mountains and then Thunder down their steep elevations toward the fs and the coast in the west these rivers are fed by predominantly Westerly winds that bring them abundant levels of precipitation and their steep drops and waterfalls provide a massive amount of kinetic energy just sitting there that can be captured by turbines to generate electricity Norway therefore has one of the highest hydroelectric power potentials of any country in the world and beginning in 1905 they started allowing outside foreign companies with higher levels of expertise come in and start building modern hydroelectric dams to unlock their potential dozens and then hundreds of Hydro power stations were built all across the country to the point where today there are 84 large hydrop power stations with capacities greater than 10 megaw and 838 small hydrop power stations with capacities between 1 and 10 megaw with hundreds of even smaller stations on top of that all combined these hydr power stations today are powerful enough to generate an overwhelming 95% of all of Norway's total electricity demand while Norway is the seventh largest producer of hydropower anywhere in the world as of 2024 with a total generation rate that is more than half of the United States but all for only 167th of the American population the harnessing of Norway's hydromite in the early 20th century provided the country with its first major economic boom as it enabled the country to rapidly industrialize and Electrify Itself by 1920 Norway was consuming more electricity per capita than any other country in the world and more than 2third of the population already had access to electricity which was double the rate in the United States at the time this huge amount of energy for such a small population then enabled the Norwegians to develop extremely energy-intensive factories that eventually leing in specializing in refined aluminum production under the norsk hydro corporation which is today one of the largest aluminum companies in the world norsk Hydro continues to Source the vast majority of the energy they use to produce refined aluminum from Norway's hydrop power and the company is 34% publicly owned by the Norwegian state it has enabled Norway to become by far the largest producer of aluminum in Europe and the eighth largest producer in the world today which further makes the country the largest provider of aluminum to the European Union but just hydr power continued unlocking Norway's potential in the early 20th century the industry came to become dominated by the large foreign companies that came to Norway to invest and build all of the dams out and so Norway sought to gradually rest control over them to secure its own National control over its own resources Norway's small and spread out population lacked large amounts of capital and Technical expertise however they needed the large foreign investors to help them build out their hydroelectric and Factory potential and so a straight up quick nationalization of the foreign investor assets would have sent all of that foreign investment and expertise they needed fleeing in the future to avoid that outcome but to still secure their own control over their own resources Norway decided on taking a pragmatic and long approach to the hydro industry that would directly influence their approach to the oil and gas industry decades later Norway established rules that foreign companies who came to invest in Norwegian Hydra would have to follow that included Clauses that hydroelectric power stations and mines they built and funded would have to be turned over to the Norwegian government without compensation after a period of 60 to 80 years of operation this way the larger foreign companies would continue to invest in the country since they would see a long enough return on their investment but the Norwegian State knew that in the long run they would be the ones to secure the keys to their crown jewels and as a result more than 90% of Norway's hydr capacity is publicly owned by the state today and this is all why Norway was already a wealthy heavily industrialized Democratic and lowc Corruption state by the time that interest in the country's potential offshore oil and gas Fields came around in the late 1950s but at the time back then there were very few people who actually believed that there was any oil or gas to be found around the country particularly on the shallow and submerged part of the European continental shelf stretching beneath the North Sea a large part of which had geologically speaking only been recently submerged a few thousand years ago at the end of the previous Ice Age in a letter written by the Geological Survey of Norway in 1958 that has since aged fairly poorly They concluded that the possibility of any oil or gas resources being discovered on the Norwegian part of this continental shelf should be discounted entirely but then very suddenly in 1959 just the year after that letter was written a very major natural gas Discovery was made nearby that sparked significant further interest the grenan gas field in the northern Netherlands it turned out that the grin field to date is the 11th largest single natural gas field ever discovered in the world and the largest one ever discovered within the European continent it became Central to the early emergence of the Netherlands as a major gas producing country and it became a Cornerstone of the domestic European gas market and so naturally its Discovery back in 1959 sparked renewed interest in curiosity that just perhaps there were further gas and potentially even oil Discovery still to be made further Beyond beneath the as yet unexplored North Sea as well 3 years later in 1962 the American petroleum major Phillips became the first to submit an application to the Norwegian government to begin exploring for oil and gas resources within their section of the North Sea the only problem was at the time nobody really knew where Norway section of the North Sea actually was because the maritime boundaries within the North Sea hadn't been firmly or legally settled yet between all of the Nations that surrounded it but luckily for Norway in 1965 eager to get exploring and drilling themselves the government of the UK hastily agreed to Simply divide the continental shelf beneath the North Sea based on the principle of the median line distance the geographic Line running down the center of the North Sea between the UK's land territory and Norway's land territory decades later this Hasty calculation would go on to massively benefit the Norwegians because it took into account all of the thousands of Norway's Islands just off of their western coast in determining where the median line ran including the island of UTA 16 km west from the mainland Norwegian Coast which shifted the median line boundary westwards just ever so much by a few extra kilometers that when the massive stratch yard oil field was discovered later in the 197 s right along the median line only 15% of it would exist within the previously agreed upon UK Maritime Zone while 85% of it would be within the Norwegian Zone giving literally billions of dollars in extra oil Revenue to the Norwegians over the British as a result almost immediately after agreeing with the British on the median line principle in 1965 the Norwegian government began granting exploration licenses to larger and more experienced foreign companies to search through their Waters that included Phillips and the first oil was struck only a couple years later in 1967 at a field they called Boulder but it wasn't considered economically viable at the time it wouldn't be until the 1990s three decades later that balder would finally begin operation and then finally just before Christmas Day in 1969 Phillips delivered the Norwegian government and people perhaps the greatest Christmas present in their nation's entire Millennia long history the news that they had discovered the echo Fisk field which turned out to be one of the largest offshore oil fields that has ever been discovered before or since anywhere in the world production out of echo Fisk began only a couple years later in 1971 and then a series of further major oil and gas discoveries were made all across the Norwegian continental shelf over the years that followed at Fields like Stratford osberg gfax and troll the latter of which generated a media sensation in 1996 when the Norwegians transported the troll a offshore oil platform to the field from the Norwegian Mainland to date this operation remains both the heaviest and the tallest structure that has ever been moved by human beings from one part of the Earth's surface to another it was also during this time that the Norwegians quickly began applying the previous lessons they had learned with the country's Hydro industry to the rapidly emerging oil and gas industry as well the country founded a state-owned oil and gas company that they initially called stat oil almost immediately after the first production of oil began and just like the pragmatic and long-term approach that the Norwegians took with the country's Hydro industry in the early 20th century they began establishing rules that the larger and more experienced foreign oil and gas companies would have to follow in order to invest in Norway's resources that would ensure Norway's eventual control over them the Norwegian state-owned stat oil was to always have more than a 50% ownership stake in every production license that the government granted which was designed to provide the larger and more experienced foreign oil and gas companies an incentive to still come and invest in the country while also providing stat oil with valuable Real World Experience through learning from the joint ventures and Norway's previous high levels of expertise in the ship ship building industry proved invaluable to Norway's quick Mastery of offshore and subsea oil and gas infrastructure projects too one of the leading underwater oil and gas infrastructure companies in the world today is currently sub C7 with billions of dollars in annual revenue and they were founded as a joint venture in 2002 by an American company and a Norwegian ship building company known as name was changed to what it's currently known by Econo and today thanks to Norway's foresight and guiding the company and helping it gain foreign expertise over the decades ecor is itself a global energy major and is ranked as the 10th largest oil and gas company in the world with a current market cap of roughly $85 billion which puts it on a similar footing to the current market cap of BP at about 98.3 billion equinor now produces approximately 70% of all the oil and gas on the Norwegian continental shelf today and it remains 67% majority owned by the Norwegian government with the remaining 33% of its shares being publicly traded on global stock exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange on the NASDAQ and as it turned out there actually was a lot of oil and gas on the Norwegian continental shelf so much so the Norway now has the largest reserves of oil in Europe outside of Russia and is ranked 20th in the world with similar volumes as former OPEC countries Angola and Ecuador and with more than three times as many reserves as the next place in Europe just across the North Sea the UK and in terms of natural gas Norway again is ranked as having the largest reserves in Europe outside of Russia and the 21st largest in the world with volumes that are similar to The Lights of Kuwait and aeran and with its extremely close proximity to the European Union's Market Norway had a ready too export Market all lined up for itself as well with hardly any oil and gas resources of their own beyond the Gren gen gas field in the Netherlands the EU has practically always had to import the vast majority of the oil and gas they consume from abroad oil was a far easier problem for the EU to solve though because oil can effectively be imported from anywhere else in the world the block was less handicapped by geography here because in its crude form oil is a liquid that can be easily loaded up into barrels or containers and shipped across the oceans on container ships from origin to destination meaning that the EU could easily import oil from as far away as the Americas in Nigeria with little worries but natural gas was a completely different problem for the Europeans to solve gas is far more difficult and expensive to export and move around the world than oil because well it's a gas while it's in its gas estate it takes up a huge amount of volume and it's completely economically impractical to load up onto container vessels and ship somewhere else thus before the rise of liquefied natural gas production gas markets were highly geographically Regional in nature for Europe this meant building out a series of pipelines to transport natural gas from relatively nearby sources to Consumers the largest of which during the 20th and early 21st centuries were constructed from the relatively nearby gas sources in the Netherlands Algeria the Soviet and later Russian Siberian fields from aeran after the collapse of the Soviet Union and of course from Norway and the Norwegian continental shelf this historically made the EU mostly dependent upon natural gas imports from three of its closest and largest neighbors Russia Norway and Algeria by 2021 Norway had constructed a total of 11 undersea gas pipelines connecting their gas resources directly to European consumers and then in 2010 Norwegian gas production exceeded the country's oil production for the very first time as the demand in the EU and the UK continued growing for more and by the 2010s Norway had already emerged as the second largest exporter of natural gas to the EU only behind the Russians by 2021 the year immediately before Russia launched its full-scale Invasion into Ukraine Russia was supplying about 40% of the eu's total gas Imports while Norway was supplying about another other 25% of them while Russia was further supplying the EU with about 25% of their oil imports up against Norway's share of 99.4% of their oil imports and by this point with billions of dollars a year gushing into the Norwegian economy Norway had already effectively become a Petro State the only one in Europe other than Russia in 2021 oil and gas made up roughly 21% of the entire Norwegian GDP and made up a whopping 51% of all of Norway's exports by value but Norway never actually evolved into the usual petate stereotypes of corruption and authoritarianism for several notable reasons that set it notably apart from the others well there is no universally agreed upon definition of what actually constitutes a Petro State the most General definitions revolve around countries whose economies are very heavily dependent upon the extractions and exporting of oil and gas to the point where without those Industries their economies could face collapse 25 countries around the world spanning South America Africa the middle east Europe and Asia usually come to mind as the world's most classic examples of Petro States and out of all 25 of them every single one are considered by The Economist democracy index to be either authoritarian regimes or hybrid regimes except for only two of them Indonesia and Norway but Norway stands out above all of the rest ahead of even Indonesia because the same index from The Economist literally ranks Norway as the single most democratic free and egalitarian society on the face of the Earth which puts its status as a Petra State into an extremely stark contrast with the likes of Saudi Arabia Iran Russia and Venezuela which are all among the most heavily authoritarian and corrupt states in the world and a big part of the reason why an abundance of oil and gas resources didn't turn Norway into a heavily authoritarian and corrupt state like most of the other Petra States is because of the country's geography history and forward-looking policies that their government enacted from early on when Norway discovered oil the country already had a long culture of communal ownership of Natural Resources going back centuries to the lumber and hydro Industries the country was was already wealthy industrialized highly developed and had a stable functioning democracy where wealth and power were each already highly decentralized Democratic institutions and communal ownership of resources were already strongly ingrained within the fabric of Norwegian society as a result which is an incredibly stark contrast to just about every single other country that discovered enormous oil and gas wealth Saudi Arabia discovered its oil wealth when it was ruled by a warlord who had established an absolute monarchy and had already centralized Power full around himself and so the oil wealth only further cemented the monarchy's power oil was similarly discovered in Iran while the country was ruled by an autocratic monarchy and the keys to the oil wealth were inherited by the still autocratic Islamic revolution after 1979 oil was discovered within Russia during the zaris period and the keys to the oil wealth were inherited by the still autocratic Soviets and then further inherited by the modern Putin regime oil was discovered in Venezuela during the autocratic military dictatorship of Juan vente Gomez while the oil Industries in Syria Iraq the United Arab Emirates and all across Africa were basically handed over directly from autocratic European Colonial administrations to autocratic dictatorships that immediately or very quickly took over in their place of all the countries to have ever discovered enormous oil and gas wealth only a handful have ever done so while already being wealthy politically independent and with stable traditions of democracy and low levels of inequality and the only one with a very small population to have ever done so has been Norway Norway was thus better prepared to handle the sudden influx of oil and gas wealth than most others havean but it still initially caused the Norwegian economy to become rapidly undiversified and dependent on oil and gas anyway throughout the 1970s and early 80s when the price of oil was high the oil dependent Norwegian economy was booming but then in 1986 the price of oil suddenly collapsed and with it Norway's heavily oild dependent economy suffered its first oil induced recession over the past six Decades of History going back to 1960 the Norwegian economy has only ever shrunk on three occasions in 2020 during the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic in 2009 during the depths of the great financial crisis and in 1988 back during the depths of this oil recession but the Norwegian government learned a valuable lesson from this recession in the 1980s it needed to diversify itself away from the unpredictable es and flows in the oil market and so just a couple years later in 1990 the Norwegian state with its long history of communal ownership of resources and Democratic institutions had the foresight and the capability to establish the pension fund Global otherwise known as the so-called oil fund the fund was established as a communal Sovereign wealth fund owned by the Norwegian State and people into which the Surplus revenues from the state-owned oil company equinor and taxes on the oil and gas industry would be invested into for the benefit of Norway's future generations and to diversify the government and economy away from oil and gas strict rules and guid lines were established around the funds operations it would invest heavily into Global stock markets and real estate in order to diversify away from the Norwegian economy and very strict rules were set into place that no more than 3% of the funds assets could be withdrawn in any given year which not only enabled the fund to continue growing and compounding with time but also disallowed the abuse of the fund's assets by Norwegian politicians who would otherwise be tempted into promising to lavishly spend the oil wealth today at the expense of tomorrow in order to get themselves elected a Hallmark of the more autocratic Petra states where unpopular regimes or dictators spend the oil wealth lavishly on their people as a sort of bargain for them to put up with their authoritarianism and as the Norwegian oil and gas industry continued growing and more wealth was deposited into the oil fund and as the global economy continued growing alongside it and as withdrawals were capped at no more than 3% per year the Norwegian oil funds steadily evolved from nothing in 1990 into the absolute Behemoth that it is today currently the fund is by far the largest Sovereign wealth Fund in the entire world its current net assets exceed more than 1 and A2 trillion ion us and the fund owns an estimated 1.5% of all the shares of all the more than 9,000 publicly traded companies in the world and is the global stock market's single largest investor today making the fund the world's biggest stock market whale this is despite the fact that the Norwegian economy itself only represents about 0.5% of the entire global economy and despite the fact that the Norwegian population only represents about 0.07% of the worldwide human population and yet they own 1 and a 12% of the global stock market the oil fund is currently so massive relative to Norway's small population that it's worth approximately $275,000 per Norwegian citizen if they decided to ever cash it all out and it's already reached a point where the funds conservatively capped 3% withdrawal rate per year can safely provide for about 20% of the entire Norwegian government's annual budget in perpetuity giving Norway the ability to rely Less on the unpredictable fluctuations of of oil and gas price Revenue to continue funding their government operations and shielding the country from future oil price collapses now back to Norway's oil and gas industry the country controls the 20th largest proven reserves of oil and the 21st largest proven reserves of natural gas which have granted Norway the ability to become the world's 13th largest oil producer and the ninth largest gas producer representing about 2% of worldwide oil demand and 3% of worldwide gas demand but Norway's fairly modest shares of worldwide oil and gas reserves and production are reach absolutely dwarfed by Norway's massively outsized shares of worldwide oil and gas exports despite only being the 13th largest oil producer and only having the 20th largest reserves Norway is currently the world's eighth largest oil exporter and is fast approaching the exports of Kuwait in seventh place despite Kuwait having 12 and 1 half times more oil reserves than Norway and 50% higher oil production and it's even more lopsided when it comes to Natural Gas where despite only only being the ninth largest producer and only having the 21st largest reserves Norway is the fourth largest global exporter anyway only just barely behind the big three of the global gas market the United States Russia and Qatar the latter of which the Norwegians are rapidly approaching a takeover of to become one of the new top three in the global gas industry now Norway has been able to achieve this massively outsized presence in its share of global oil and gas exports due to several different factors the first of which is of course its close proximity to the energy hungry European union and its ability to construct subc pipelines directly from source to Consumer the next factor is Norway's own small population that naturally has a lower energy demand than countries with similar reserves but much larger populations like Angola Ecuador and aeran while the third and arguably biggest factor is a result of Norway's own geography and strategically chosen policies Norway produces enough Renewable hydr Power through all of its rivers and dams to power 95% of the country's electricity demand and in addition to having the largest Hydro potential in Europe the country also has one of the largest wind potentials as well the coasts around Norway and the mountains that run along the country's spine are among the windiest locations to be found on a continent that is generally not a very windy place so in addition to having the seventh largest installed hydroelectric capacity in the world Norway already has the 18th largest installed wind capacity in the world as well and has a massively untapped potential here that is only just starting to grow so in addition to having pretty large amounts of oil and gas the country also has huge amounts of renewable energy potential as well and they've been using that potential to their strategic Advantage they effectively keep all of their renewable hydro and wind resources in house to meet their own energy demands indefinitely which has freed them up to sell most of their oil and gas resources that they don't really need to Outsiders abroad and especially to the energy hungry EU directly next door and in addition to harnessing their local Hydro wind and even geothermal potential to effectively turn their entire electric grid into 100% domestically produced Renewables they're also reducing the amount of fossil fuels their country consumes even further by offering generous tax and financial incentives to their citizens to adopt fully electric vehicles or EVS as well as a result a whopping 88% of all new car sales in Norway across 2022 were EVS which is by far the highest market share that EVS have yet achieved in any country in the world today and since these proe policies have been being pursued within Norway for a long time now nearly one in every three vehicles on Norwegian roads are already EVS that don't consume any oil and are powered instead by the state's domestic and renewable Hydro wind and geothermal resources and for Norway this is about far more than simply reducing emissions and combating climate change it's also about National Security and financial power the more that the Norwegian electricity grid became powered by renewable sources from within Norway the more secure the country became from having to rely on foreign energy Imports and Supply chains and the more of their own oil and gas resour resources they could sell abroad and the more cash they could plow into their Sovereign wealth fund to diversify their economy further away from oil and the more EVS they get adopted within the country that can be indefinitely powered by their domestic renewable sources then that even more of their domestic oil resources they won't need and can sell abroad as well to continue plowing even more money into the Sovereign wealth fund to diversify even more away from oil it is a cascading strategy that has been diligently followed in Norway for decades that is steadily transforming the country into one of if not the most powerful and influential States in Europe it is thus Norway's unique 21st century philosophy and doctrine that its oil and gas resources are to be produced and sold to foreigners while its renewable resources are to be harnessed and provided for the needs of the Norwegian people this clever and unique strategy has set them up to be capable of selling and exporting virtually all of the oil and gas that they produce while simultaneously being completely energy independent at the same time which is how Norway's modest Global oil and gas reserves and production levels take up so much more of the world's total exports and how the country has gotten so spectacularly Wealthy on the process the results of all of this prudence and Decades of forward-looking strategic thinking all culminated in 2022 after the Russians decided to invade Ukraine in the aftermath of triggering the biggest war in Europe since World War II the European Union decided to begin shutting down their previously massive Imports of Russian oil and gas in order to deny the Kremlin its primary source of funding for their War Machine attempting to overrun Ukraine but of course the EU had to quickly find somebody else to begin replacing Russia's previously large shares of 25% of their oil imports and 45% of their gas Imports and Norway with its Big Oil and Gas resources right nearby and its friendly relations was the best positioned country in the world to take advantage of the situation and fill in the demand consequently exports of Norwegian oil by tankers gas through pipelines and even liquefied gas or LNG by tankers all began surging towards the EU Market to replace the Russians with Norway's overall share of EU oil imports rising from 99.5% just before the war to 13.3% in the first quarter of 2023 which makes Norway currently the eu's single largest provider of oil Norway's share of the eu's imported piped gas also skyrocketed upwards from 38.1% just before the war to a whopping 46.1% in the first quarter of 2023 while Norway's share of the eu's imported LNG Rose from basically nothing just before the invasion to 6.6% in q1 of 2023 the Block's fifth largest provider of LNG now overall and at the same time as Norway's oil and gas export volumes to a suddenly desperate EU were rapidly Rising the global prices of oil and gas were each rapidly Rising right alongside them the result of this situation caused by Russia has been an absolute Financial Bonanza for the Norwegians the likes of which has never before been seen the country pulled in a whopping $12.3 billion in revenue from their oil and gas industry in 2022 alone and then immediately shattered that record with another $131 billion in oil and gas Revenue across 2023 compared to a relatively poultry $29 billion in oil and gas Revenue that they earned Before the War and the energy crisis in 2021 Norway's oil and gas Revenue in 2023 alone was roughly equivalent to the entire Collective GDP of Slovakia and they've been utilizing their sudden windfall very wisely they have invested enormous amounts of it into the Sovereign wealth fund and tens of billions of dollars more being invested to explore for even further untapped oil and gas deposits that could be found within Norway's far Northern baren SE that Still Remains largely unexplored more pipelines are being built to Europe to expand their export capacity even further and to replace the Russians previous market share even further Norway's increasing displacement of Russia in the European energy Market was perhaps best symbolized in September of 2022 on the 27th of that month a series of bombs detonated underwater destroying sections of the nordstream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines that connected German factories and homes directly to Russia's huge natural gas fields in Siberia both pipelines were rendered completely inoperable by the sabotage destroying Russia's ability to directly export gas to Germany and then the very next day afterwards the Norwegians and the poles inaugurated the opening of the Baltic pipe Norway's brand new gas pipeline to Poland that will replace all of the roughly 60% of Poland's natural gas Imports that had been coming from Russia with Norwegian gas instead Norway has therefore emerged in the 2020s as the European Union's largest single supplier of energy and in the future it isn't likely to be limited to oil and gas exports either in the future as climate change progresses it's expected that precipitation levels in Scandinavia will actually increase further than what they're like today which will mean that even more water will be feeding into Norway's rivers that Cascade down the mountains toward the west Coast while Norway's still largely untapped wind potential is expected to be expanded to make the country a global leader in wind energy as well Norway likely won't need all of this excess renewable hydro and wind power for just itself in the future and so the possibility has already been raised of building out transmission lines from Norway to the EU so that the Norwegians can export their hydro and wind sourced energy to Europe in addition to their oil and gas resources and besides transforming into Europe's most significant energy Province Norway will also likely become one of Europe and the Western world's largest sources of mineral and rare earth might as well it's well known by now that the global push toward a green energy transition which is being largely spearheaded by European economies will require vast amounts of metals and Rare Earth elements to keep itself going rare Earths especially are vital materials that are necessary for Ev batteries smartphones wind turbines digital cameras hard drives and tons of other things that are vital for powering modern 21st century life and growth unfortunately though for Europe and the Western World the vast majority of the world's proven Rare Earth reserves are currently dominated by China China conducts an overwhelming 63% of all the rare earth mining in the world which is more than every other country combined and China conducts an even more overwhelming 85% of all the world's Rare Earth processing China controls roughly a third of the planet's proven Rare Earth reserves followed up by Vietnam Russia and Brazil after which there's a huge gap before Australia comes next lagging far behind any of the top four and China has already been weaponizing its dominance over these Rare Earth Resources as well in a similar way to how Russia weaponizes its dominance over oil and gas in July of 2023 China declared that they were introducing new export restrictions on two metals that are critical for the manufacturing of semiconductors gallium and Germania in retaliation to US economic sanctions on China's semiconductor industry China currently produces 98% of the world's gallium and 68% of the world's germanium so if China decides you can't have them you effectively just can't and although neither gallium nor germanium are rare earth metals they are nonetheless also still critical to powering modern Digital Life and so China's export restrictions on them were meant as a clear threat that additional metals and minerals that China dominates could become restricted in the future as well but it was around that same time that a company called Norgay mining in Norway suddenly made a surprise announcement in June of 20123 they had just about out of nowhere discovered by far the largest reserve of phosphate rocket ever found in the world and was just sitting there in southern Norway this whole time the company has since estimated that this deposit contains around 70 billion tons of economically recoverable phosphate which literally in a Flash doubled the entire world's previously proven reserves of phosphate that had sat at 71 billion tons beforehand put another way this recent Norwegian Discovery is so vast that it can supply the entire world's demand for phosphate all on its own for the next half a century to come and it completely undermined the previous dominance over phosphate that was up to then enjoyed by Morocco who controls an estimated 50 billion tons of the resource that equaled about 70% of the world's proven reserves before June of 2023 and then was cut down a size by half to only about 35% of the world's proven reserves after the discovery in Norway prior to Norway's gigantic Discovery it was Morocco and China who were the largest producers of phosphates and they dominated the global market for it phosphates are really important because they're a critical component used in fertilizer and Global food chains and in smaller quantities they're also similarly used to produce digital devices and EV batteries and noray Mining still isn't finished either they believe that their huge phosphate Discovery in southern Norway also contains huge amounts of metals like titanium and vadium as well metals that are vital for the construction of everything from aircraft to computers and submarines and more at the moment the production of both metals are dominated by China who produces roughly 36% of the world's titanium and more than half of the world's vadium while vadium is produ is further 99% dominated by the bricks countries with virtually all of the world's production of the metal happening in China Russia South Africa and Brazil this has meant that for a very long time the US and the EU have each had to rely on geopolitically tenuous Supply chains for their access to these raw materials that are vital to continue building airplanes and submarines and computers and China's export restrictions on germanium and gallium show that China could in the future decide on introducing even harsher export restrictions on titanium and vadium as well Norway's probable massive amounts of both titanium and vadium could end up granting Europe and the West their strategic autonomy from China if norg mining delivers while Norway is also Now set to become the world's newest largest source of phosphates this ultimately means that in addition to becoming Europe's largest source of oil and gas and a major source of renewable energy Norway is also primed to become Europe's largest source of many of the rare earth materials that are crucial for modern Technologies the green energy transition and AG culture and Norway is completely undermining the previous dominance in all of these industries in Europe that have previously been enjoyed by more autocratic powers like Russia and China Norway is providing the Europeans with the ability to rely more on the most democratic country in the world for their raw materials and less on their historically large autocratic providers like Russia Algeria Libya aeran and the Gulf States which means the Norway is probably only going to continue growing richer and richer by expanding their Sovereign wealth fund even further to dominate more of the global stock and bond markets while expanding its tax incentives to completely Electrify their vehicles and grid even further so that they can keep selling more oil and gas to Europe to continue fueling their Sovereign wealth fund Norway has basically discovered the geopolitical equivalent of the infinite money glitch and they've wisely set themselves up for generations of prosperity for every Norwegian citizen for years to come now there's a lot of data that goes into producing these kinds of videos when whether it's showing how Norway and Russia compete for the oil and gas market in Europe what Norway's wind and hydroelectric potentials look like how Norway's small population Stacks up against larger city states are showing how China dominates the rare earth metals industry the ability to visualize raw data like this on the map is exactly what makes learning the stuff so fascinating to me and it's why the exploring data visually course is one of my favorite courses that I've ever taken with this video sponsor brilliant brilliant is a stem learning platform that helps you learn by actually doing doing they don't just give you a mountain of text and expect you to remember everything you read they use interactive exercises to teach you the intuitive principles then build these principles upon each other so that you can genuinely understand complex subjects like data visualization and Analysis statistics computer science astrophysics and tons of others they really know how to teach for results which is why brilliant is perfect for the kind of 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Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 3,687,542

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know

Id: RO8vWJfmY88

Length: 44min 29sec (2669 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 07 2024