It's not yet a mess in Norway, but apparently "the most democratic country in the world" is prospecting a lot in the Arctic to maintain its oil manna:
Arctic oil: NGOs lose iconic lawsuit against Norway
Norwegian justice has dismissed Thursday Greenpeace and two other NGOs opposed to the allocation by Norway of oil licenses in the Arctic, an emblematic case showing that the fight against global warming is playing more and more in the courtrooms.
In a judgment still subject to appeal, the Oslo court found that the Norwegian State had not violated the Constitution by granting in May 2016 concessions in the Barents Sea to 13 oil groups, among which the national champion Statoil, the Americans Chevron and ConocoPhillips, and the Russian Lukoil.
Greenpeace, together with the organizations Nature and Youth and the Grandparents' Climate Campaign, summoned Norway by invoking for the first time a recent constitutional provision which guarantees everyone's right to a healthy environment.
The complainants had also argued that new oil activities in the Arctic, a fortiori fragile region, would go against the Paris Agreement signed by Oslo in 2016, which aims to limit warming to less than 2 ° C climate.
While recognizing that paragraph 112 of the Constitution brought new rights to the litigant, the Oslo court concluded that this did not apply to the granting of petroleum licenses.
The judge ruled, in particular, that Norway, the leading producer of petroleum and natural gas in Western Europe, could not be held responsible for the carbon dioxide emissions generated by its exports of hydrocarbons to other countries.
Oil industry satisfied
An NGO victory would have had serious economic repercussions for the kingdom, which owes its wealth to oil. This allowed him to raise a sovereign fund of more than 1.000 billion dollars, the largest in the world.
Faced with the decline in its oil production, halved since 2000, Norway counts today on the Great North: according to official estimates, the Barents Sea conceals about 65% of the resources remaining to be discovered off the country.
During the trial in November, the State - a 67% shareholder in Statoil - claimed that the allocation of exploration licenses had been in accordance with the law. His defender, Attorney General Fredrik Sejersted, had also denounced an NGO "show".
"Norway's oil policy is the business of Parliament, not the judiciary," Tommy Hansen, spokesperson for the oil industry, said Thursday.
"And it was a unanimous Parliament minus one vote that adopted the 23rd cycle of oil concessions. He therefore enjoys a solid political and democratic majority", he told AFP.
The horizon of the petroleum industry in the Norwegian Far North is not clear however: the recent prospecting campaigns have been disappointing and the operating costs of any discoveries are expected to be high, which has diverted several majors from the region.
http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/petrole-de-l-arctique-les-ong-perdent-un-proces-emblematique-contre-la-norvege-04-01-2018-2184090_24.php"Engineering is sometimes about knowing when to stop" Charles De Gaulle.
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