Word: norwegians
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...week Eivind Reiten is unlikely to forget. On Oct. 1, the oil and gas arm of Hydro, an Oslo-based energy and metals company he was running, completed a $36 billion merger with Statoil, its beefier Norwegian rival, creating the world's largest offshore energy operator. Five days later, Reiten hosted his country's King and Queen in Nyhamna, a third of the way up Norway's west coast, at the official launch of a record-breaking gas production and processing project forged by Hydro to harness gas from 120 km away under the Norwegian...
...decades, Statoil and Hydro relied on the plentiful reserves on the Norwegian continental shelf for almost all their output; last year, that area off the country's north and west shores accounted for more than four-fifths of the two firms' production. That bounty has made this nation of just 4.6 million people rich. Government taxes on the country's oil business - Norway is the world's fifth largest exporter by volume - have helped bloat Norway's national pension fund to around $350 billion. But those good times couldn't last forever. With fields beginning to dry up, oil production...
...trends toward consolidation and nationalization, in fact, helped drive the Norwegian merger. To a government or national oil company looking for overseas partners to help exploit domestic resources, seeing two Norwegian firms, both largely state-owned, jostling for the same openings could be "confusing," says Mellbye. "They thought there would be some political preference given from the Norwegian authorities and then on that basis they could make a choice," he says. "But that was never done." The two companies began negotiations late last year, and when in December they brought their merger proposal to the government it was quickly approved...
...course, the two worlds can meet. Afghan Shah Muhammad Rais claimed that his portrayal as a domestic tyrant in the global best seller The Bookseller of Kabul by Norwegian journalist Asne Seierstad exposed him to dishonor. So he did a very Western thing, suing Seierstad for defamation in Norway. Then he went one better: Rais now has a deal with a Norwegian publisher for a book of his own. A spot on Oprah has to be next...
...while people may be learning more about Greenland through global warming's effects on its fragile environment, what's less well known is that a grassroots movement for greater self-rule has been brewing in the Danish territory for the last 30 years. First colonized in 1721 when a Norwegian Danish priest came to what is now the capital city of Nuuk, Greenland remains part of the Danish kingdom. In 1979, its predominantly Inuit population fought for management of domestic affairs, which it was granted, but Copenhagen still handles its foreign relations and supports the island with a whopping...