Will Deepwater Horizon have consequences for oil and gas drilling in Northern Norway’s pristine Lofoten and Vesterålen?

The United States is not the only place where offshore drilling has been on the political agenda during the last years. In Norway, where the offshore oil and gas industry is a significant part of the economy, making Norway the third largest oil exporter in the world, there has been debate about opening up scenic coastal areas of Lofoten and Vesterålen for offshore drilling. The Northern Norwegian coastal archipelagos feature amazingly scenic nature complete with fjords and mountains, the world’s largest population of cod along with a thriving fishing industry, and whether possible drilling in the area should be allowed to commence has already been the subject of intense debate.

Still, Norway’s Labor Party led coalition government is arguably leaning towards opening up the area for oil and gas investments, in spite of vocal protests from its Socialist Left Party members. It has certainly been  eager to drill further north. In the Barents Sea the massive Snøhvit project has already been developed in spite of claims from environmental groups that the nature in the area is too sensitive.  And after Norway and Russia finally settled its 40-year old maritime border dispute during president Medvedev’s visit last week, Minister of Oil Terje Riis-Johansen announced that new searches for oil and gas resources in the area will commence as soon as possible.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster might change this, though.  Snorre Valen of the Socialist Left Party wrote a piece in Dagbladet yesterday urging the government to do like the Americans and ban any new offshore drilling until a full investigation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster has been conducted. The influential environmental group Natur og Ungdom also posted an article on their website titled Deepwater Horizon Must Have Political Consequences [for Norway].

It is still early, however, and it remains to see if the events in Louisiana will influence the Norwegian policy debate much more. Here at Evolution-Revolution, though, we think Statoil’s public relations people at least are worrying. To the extent that pictures of oil-soiled wildlife along the Gulf of Mexico helps create similar images of spoiled Northern Norwegian nature in the imagination of Norwegian voters and policy-makers, they are hardly in the interest of Norway’s powerful petroleum lobby. The fact that bad weather has been causing trouble for the clean-up efforts in the Mexico Gulf are extra worrying, as Northern Norway’s coastal areas are known for their sometimes extreme weather conditions, which would make clean-up and containment extremely difficult in the event of a spill.

Nevertheless, if we are to believe the Wall Street Journal (which Dagbladet seems to do), the ongoing disaster could have been averted if a $500,000 acoustic backup-switch had been installed on Deepwater Horizon.  Norwegian regulators, apparently more concerned with risk-management than their American counterparts, have required the switch to be present on almost every platform operating in Norway since 1993. Perhaps the Gulf spill is not so relevant to the Norwegian policy debate after all.