Norway’s Plan to Turn the World into a Mad Max Dystopia

This Energy U-Turn Points the Way to Huge Profits…

If ever there was a poster child for “Well, that didn’t work as planned,” it’s Norway and what would seem to be a huge change of heart at a national level. 

Ultimately, this is a dispatch about the vast opportunities that will come from owning fossil fuel investments over the remainder of the decade. But we start with a nation of do-gooders who are now finding out that plans can and will go awry when the basis for your decision is rooted in hype and disinformation. 

You might well know that Norway is at the vanguard of a green energy, feel-good movement.  

I phrase it that way—dripping with snark—because the green energy crowd is largely a holier-than-thou cult preaching altruism. They endlessly scream their misguided demands that fossil fuel production must go away immediately… even as they rely on all the technology fossil fuels allow. 

Indeed, back in 2019, Norway’s famous Sovereign Wealth Fund that manages the country’s $1 trillion-plus wealth decided to dump its exposure to oil-and-gas investments. The irony being, of course, that it was the oil and gas reserves Norway pumped from its own land that created the fund to begin with. 

Today, however, Norway is having an existential moment… 

See, Europe found out in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that tying your energy dependence to a tempestuous, former KGB officer with an emperor complex was a stupid idea.  

As Russia and most of Europe traded tit-for-tat sanctions in the early months of the war, what ultimately came about was Europe rejecting and/or losing access to Russian energy. 

This caused European energy supplies to collapse and energy prices to shoot the moon. 

In a desperate search for new gas suppliers, the European continent turned to Norway, one of the world’s leading producers of oil and gas.  

But Norway is also one of the world’s leading bleeding-heart nations, so worried about Mother Nature that the country’s leaders tried (and, thankfully, failed) to convince the rest of the world to limit fossil fuel production only to known reserves… meaning no searching for new oil and gas to replace reserves that decay with every passing day. 

That would’ve been a massively boneheaded plan. 

Known reserves will last the world for about 15 years at current consumption levels. But that figure is not really accurate. Demand is increasing every single day, so the 15 years would be much shorter because the drawdown would grow larger every year.  

More importantly, at some point (probably immediately on implementation of said bonehead plan), every oil-producing nation would begin setting aside part of its production in a strategic reserve.  

That would inspire all the energy-rich nations to build what is effectively a “sovereign energy fund” so they could enjoy access to oil and gas well beyond 15 years or so. 

But it would also mean that energy-poor nations would be starved of the resources they need to grow their economy and manage their population’s demand for energy.  

Asymmetrical warfare would ensue. 

Poverty, hunger, and inflation would be endemic. 

Far from being a green energy utopia, the world would be a dystopian landscape of haves and have-nots locked in a Mad Max battle for survival. 

Alas, we’re not going to get to that point because the rest of the world told Norway to scram with is lunacy. 

And now for the big irony: Norway is trashing its own green energy plans. The country that wanted to limit global fossil fuel production to existing reserves has recently approved a plan to develop another 19 new oil and gas fields at a cost approaching $20 billion. 

It points to the fact that there is no easy path to replace fossil fuel energy anytime soon.  

Which is where the opportunity lies for those who understand what’s taking shape right now: underinvestment in finding new reserves, even as global demand for energy increases at a pace far faster than the growth of renewable energy.  

Said another way: Demand for fossil fuels is growing, but supply isn’t keeping up… and wind and solar haven’t got a snowball’s chance in Havana of covering the shortfall. 

Expect higher energy prices, likely this year. 

And expect the stocks of oil and gas companies to have a helluva good remainder of the 2020s. Already many of the energy stocks in the Global Intelligence Portfolio—such as Transocean, which is up over 60%—are spiking higher.