Norway doubles down on oil, says "Drill, Baby, Drill" as SA Concourt sterilises Wild Coast bounty

The FT reports today that Norway is doubling down on oil and gas exploration to protect its economy, just days after SA’s Constitutional Court went the other way. On 14 August 2026, it permanently blocked Shell and Impact Africa's exploration right off the Transkei/Wild Coast, upholding lower-court findings that the 2014 permit was granted without proper consultation of coastal communities, rejecting a Supreme Court of Appeal route that would have let the companies fix the flaw via a renewal process. That ends a five-year legal battle and closes off seismic surveying in the area for good — a sharp contrast to Norway's fossil-fuel push..By Richard Milne.The extreme heat of Europe’s summer has pushed many to look at green energy alternatives to the fossil fuel hegemony. But in one of the cooler parts of the continent, the refrain this August is a contrarian “drill, baby, drill”.Norway is western Europe’s largest petroleum producer, and in particular the EU’s biggest supplier of gas. Far from aiming to wean itself off its dependency, the rich Scandinavian country is looking to double down on oil and gas.The biennial ONS energy conference in Stavanger — Norway’s version of Houston — is always known for its industry boosterism. But this week’s edition has highlighted the urgency of an industry facing natural sharp declines in production and a planned shift away from its wares by its biggest customer.Norway became one of the world’s richest countries, complete with a $2.3tn sovereign wealth fund, because of oil and gas. But its attempts to prolong the life of its most important industry underscore not only the risks and rewards of depending so heavily on one sector, but also the ongoing struggle in Europe between promoting a green agenda for the long term and keeping factories running and the lights on in the short term.“I don’t think Norway should be ashamed of saying we made a lot of money from oil and gas, that we are good at making money from oil and gas, and that we should continue trying to make as much money from oil and gas as possible,” one former senior Norwegian policymaker told me recently.A number of news items from this week highlight how it is going about it. The three largest oil and gas companies on the Norwegian shelf — state-controlled Equinor, Aker BP and Eni-controlled Vår Energi — said on Monday that they would team up to explore “frontier areas”, potential oilfields that are more expensive to drill than mature regions but that could offer higher-impact finds.“It is a little drill, baby, drill. But controlled,” said Karl Johnny Hersvik, Aker BP’s chief executive. That echoes the language from earlier this year of Sylvi Listhaug, the leader of the populist Progress Party, which currently tops opinion polls.On the same day, Norway’s government asked its supreme court to overturn the rulings of two lower courts that invalidated permits for three oilfields due to a failure to properly consider their environmental impact.And a day later, the main trade union and employer organisation in Norway joined forces with the country’s energy trade association to call for exploration in a highly controversial area just off the picturesque Lofoten peninsula in an effort to stem a forecast decline in production in the decades to come.Their report said that without additional measures, Norway’s petroleum production would fall by almost two-thirds by 2050. That date is significant because for many European politicians and companies it is the deadline for their economies and businesses to become net zero. Listhaug and Norway’s energy companies want to extend the lifetime of the country’s oil and gas fields well beyond that, believing it should be one of the last countries to stop pumping petroleum assuming that demand persists.All this scotches any talk of Norway going green. It had positioned itself as a potential “green battery” for Europe, with its hydropower resources able to help the continent when electricity prices were high. But power prices are surging in Norway itself as data centres and other factories use up its electricity surplus, with little new generation coming online.So it is little wonder that Terje Aasland, Norway’s energy minister, told Reuters this week that the green battery aspiration had been canned, and instead Oslo was emphasising drilling for oil in its Arctic region, which it says is largely ice-free and therefore much lower risk than other countries’ polar areas.All this stands in contrast to the proclamations of senior EU leaders, such as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who told the ONS conference that the continent needed to produce more of its own green energy as being dependent on fossil fuels made it vulnerable..Read more:.The Economist: China is now the world’s great oil power.Norway has in recent years won the bet that the EU will not follow through on what it preaches, not least as it has needed to find an alternative supplier to Russia. Norway’s politicians and companies seem increasingly confident that the EU’s green rhetoric will be submerged by the commercial reality for decades to come. It is for the EU to try to prove it wrong..© 2026 The Financial Times Ltd..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.

Norway doubles down on oil, says "Drill, Baby, Drill" as SA Concourt sterilises Wild Coast bounty

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