With the World Economic Forum in Davos wrapped up, following the disheartening COP25 in Madrid and all the words spent on an energy transition oriented towards a greater share of renewable sources, Norway surprises everyone and entrusts its energy future, once again, to oil. Right now, in the middle of the North Sea, four platforms perched on their yellow supports, weighing 100,000 tonnes, are ready to extract almost 3 billion barrels of black gold.

The oil field in question is called Johan Sverdrup and lies in Norwegian waters, not far from the border with the United Kingdom. The area has already attracted attention even before opening its doors (the inauguration is expected shortly): for supporters of fossil fuels, this field marks nothing less than the revival of Norway's oil industry. An environmental tragedy that shows just how difficult it will be to halt climate change.

An enormous contradiction

"Johan Sverdrup represents the future of Norwegian oil," declared an enthusiastic Arne Sigve Nylund, head of development and production in Norway at Equinor, the largest Norwegian oil company, state-controlled, which operates on the field in question. Discovered in 2010 and governed by two licences, the Johan Sverdrup field holds around 2.7 billion barrels of oil. It is therefore the largest producing field in western Europe. The company expects to be able to extract oil until 2070, despite the fact that Norway was among the first nations to ratify the Paris Agreement and has committed to eliminating all emissions by 2030.

How can this contradiction be explained? Norway is still an important producer of fossil fuels. It produces 2 million barrels of oil per day, according to the International Energy Agency: second in Europe only to Russia. On the natural gas front too, it outstrips all other European countries. In 2018, these activities accounted for 18 per cent of national gross domestic product and 62 per cent of exports. As a result, in 2017, annual national greenhouse gas emissions reached approximately 53 million tonnes, the equivalent of around 10 tonnes per person. This is roughly in line with the rest of Europe, while emissions in the United States were 15 tonnes per person in 2017 (data from the International Energy Agency).

Low-emission oil

Equinor has tried to answer the criticism by arguing that the world will still need oil for a few more decades: at that point, the company contends, it is better to source it from operations with the lowest CO2 emissions. "It is an incredibly important project for Norway. On average, we are the best at producing oil with the lowest emissions," declared Kjell-Borge Freiberg, Norway's oil minister, explaining that those of the Johan Sverdrup field would be "only" 700 grams per barrel, compared with a global average of 18 kilograms.

But since most emissions are produced when oil is burned, not when it is extracted, some argue that the only way to meet the Paris targets is to leave the oil where it is — that is, underground. Among them is Mark van Baal, founder of the organisation Follow This, a group of critical shareholders in the country's major energy companies: "An oil company that says it wants to limit its emissions while continuing to extract oil is like a cigarette manufacturer promising that all smokers will quit smoking while at the same time increasing cigarette production."

The last major field in the North Sea?

There is also a question circulating in the sector: could Johan Sverdrup be the last major North Sea oil field to be exploited? Few, in fact, had expected such a discovery back in 2010 when Lundin Petroleum, an independent Swedish oil group, found oil in those waters. It soon became clear that what had just been identified extended over a gigantic area. And it promised to earn approximately 900 billion kroner (102 billion dollars) for the Norwegian state over the next 50 years.

Expert opinion is divided on the likelihood of further major discoveries in the North Sea, given the amount of exploration already carried out over the past fifty years. Rune Nedregaard, head of the Johan Sverdrup project and executive director at Equinor, stated: "In the future we expect discoveries to be increasingly smaller. Of course, if someone had asked me that question before we found Johan Sverdrup, I would have said there was no chance of making major discoveries."

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Confirming Norway's strategy of betting on oil, Jamie Thompson, a research analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie, stated that Norway has returned to exploration levels seen before the 2015 recession. All the more so since many companies — not only Equinor, but also Lundin and Aker BP — are searching for oil in Norway. So Nedregaard's forecasts are by no means guaranteed to hold.

$5 trillion in investment in future oil

Meanwhile the Norwegian government is pressing ahead at full speed, even though oil production figures are close to their lowest levels in three decades (much of the country's energy production has been replaced by gas). Norway issued a record number of exploration licences in 2019 and hopes to continue doing so not only in the North Sea but also within the Arctic Circle, in the Barents Sea. More than half of Norway's oil reserves have yet to be explored, according to the Scandinavian authorities.

In the dossier "Overexposed", the organisation Global Witness highlighted how all production from new oil and gas fields — in addition to those already in production or development — is incompatible with achieving climate targets. Yet the global oil and gas industry has planned to spend 5 trillion dollars over the next ten years on exploration and extraction of fossil fuels. An incredible amount of money that would bring even higher revenues for governments and businesses, at the expense of the climate.