At today’s exchange rate, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is worth roughly C$3.09 trillion — an extraordinary figure for a country with a population of about 5.6 million, very close to the population of British Columbia.
That works out to approximately C$546,000 per person.
The comparison with British Columbia is striking because both jurisdictions are resource-rich and have similar-sized populations, yet they chose very different approaches to managing fossil fuel wealth.
Norway heavily taxes petroleum production and channels much of the revenue into its sovereign wealth fund for long-term public benefit. The fund now owns stakes in thousands of companies worldwide and helps finance pensions and public services.
By contrast, British Columbia has steadily reduced the public share of natural gas revenues over the past two decades while expanding LNG and gas extraction. Bonus bid revenues from competitive bidding for gas rights have largely collapsed even as production has increased dramatically.
Categories: Natural Gas, Norway
in-sights.ca 
Thanks, Norm, for continuing to pound the drum about the giveaways in the oil and gas extraction industry.
Aside from the dwindling revenue from lease bids, is there no fee per unit pumped — like a stumpage fee in the forestry sector? Call it a “pumpage fee.”
If there is no per-unit charge for harvesting a finite resource, no wonder they don’t mind flaring off all that energy at the LNG plant in Kitimat.
It’s not enough to employ a few thousand more workers and collect their income taxes: we need to be raising billions per year from the harvesters.
In the past, you’ve mentioned that oil and gas “busyness” puts a positive spin on the province’s and country’s GDP. I’d rather see spinning wind turbines.
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