Tag: norway

Norway Rejects Climate Orthodoxy’s False Choice, Builds Wealth

Norway’s Minister of Energy Terje Aasland told Reuters that his country will keep developing oil and gas in the Barents Sea irrespective of a European Union (EU) ban on Arctic drilling.

“In today’s geopolitical and security environment… I believe continued activity in the Barents Sea serves both Norwegian and European interests,” said Aasland.

Although not an EU member, Norway is a close ally and Europe’s largest gas supplier, meeting about 30% of the demand across the European Union and Britain. Last year Norwegian gas output ran near record levels, and oil production hit its highest mark since 2009. 

Without new fields, however, official projections show output dropping sharply after 2030. But Aasland intends to hold production and exports near current levels until at least 2035, and he has said that the Arctic is important to Norway remaining a long-term supplier.

The EU currently backs a ban on new Arctic drilling on environmental grounds, while buying the gas that keeps its factories running. Anders Opedal, CEO of Norwegian multinational energy company Equinor, has said that producers of Barents oil and natural gas will find buyers somewhere else if Europe refuses to buy. 

Even Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a promoter of transitioning away from fossil fuels, has urged the EU to reconsider its opposition to Arctic development for the sake of energy security.

Europe has already suffered economic damage from its “green” pretense. The IEA reports that EU electricity prices for energy-intensive industry averaged more than double American levels in 2025 and were nearly 50% above China’s. A 2024 report on European competitiveness warned that such costs are hollowing out manufacturing.

Here is where the story stops being about the Arctic and becomes about everyone else.

Norway is not a struggling petro-state rationalizing a bad habit. It is among the richest societies ever built, with per capita gross domestic product above $105,000 and a sovereign wealth fund that crossed $2.39 trillion in June. Five and a half million people have converted seabed hydrocarbons into universal healthcare, free universities, and pensions for grandchildren not yet born.

If Norway considers oil and gas indispensable to its economic position, it is unreasonable to demand that poorer countries abandon their own resources. This matters enormously for Africa, South Asia, and other rapidly developing regions. For many African households, unreliable energy can be catastrophic.

Delay of fossil fuel projects costs in ways spreadsheets miss. A gas project blocked by climate posturing means that engineering teams disband, drilling rigs go elsewhere, borrowing costs rise, and the fertilizer plant that would have used the hydrocarbon feedstock never gets built. A decade of compounding benefits is lost to a national balance sheet.

Western proponents of climate orthodoxy declare immoral the ladder their societies climbed to unprecedented prosperity. Every advanced economy industrialized with coal, oil, and gas. Norway is still doing it with a $2 trillion cushion. Norwegian leaders recognize oil and gas are critical to their nation’s future, unlike their counterparts in the EU, Canada, and Australia.

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Norway Seizes Russian Cruise Ship in the Arctic

Norway seized the Professor Molchanov at the request of Ukrainian authorities.

We have been reporting here on TGP on how Western powers have been intercepting and seizing cargo vessels suspected of being part of Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’.

The official justification is that these are sanctioned ships transporting Russian oil under false flags but, in fact, these ships provide the perfect soft targets for the European warmongers to show some semblance of ‘victory’ over bogeyman Vladimir Putin.

These ‘shadow fleet’ tankers are invariably released to continue their voyages after a few days, after the Globalist ‘leaders’ have postured enough.

But yesterday, the stakes were raised considerably as Norwegian forces seized Russia’s Professor Molchanov, a much more benign ship.

The Professor Molchanov is a Russian Arctic oceanographic research vessel that has been repurposed as a cruise ship.

The Norwegians seized the ship in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard at the request of Ukraine’s energy firm Naftogaz, enforcing a $4.22 billion arbitration award.

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‘Free Stuff’ in Norway Still Costs Half of Average Pay

Every few years, Americans rediscover Scandinavia. 

Someone visits Norway or Denmark, returns dazzled and envious of parental leave and universal childcare and asks why America refuses to copy what obviously works. On the day dedicated to celebrating America, Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wrote for The New York Times that America is so great that, in fact, it should be more like Norway. If American companies can pay high wages and generous benefits to workers there, Kristof observed, they could do so in New York, too.

If only America were willing to embrace a little more social democracy and bigger government, this popular and recurring story goes, perhaps it could enjoy the same prosperity and flourishing that Norway does – and have its population also routinely rank among the happiest on the planet.

I was born and raised in one Nordic country, have worked in another and for the last six years have lived in a third, so I’m fairly familiar with our way of life. I’ve also spent much time in America, stunned and enamoured of the way things are in the vast, diverse and unruly union of states. Europeans are simultaneously fascinated and bewildered by America. 

Plenty of things are amazing about these United States, and quite a few things awful about the Nordics; I suspect American intellectuals, dreaming about Norway without understanding its nature and trade-offs, overlook both.

“You Want Security, Health Care and the American Dream? Look to Scandinavia”

Norwegian workers certainly have higher wages than those in many European countries, including those of its fellow Scandinavians. Hotel cleaners, retail clerks and construction workers often earn salaries that surprise visiting Americans. Thanks to Baumol’s cost disease, decades of well-managed petroleum wealth have pushed up industrial and service wages. 

The first thing an American professional moving to Norway would notice isn’t the generous parental leave, but the great loss of disposable income and material well-being. Norwegian households average 30 percent less disposable income than those the US, and the cost of everyday items is much higher. 

The Scandinavian bargain might look like free services, but it as trade-off: more public goods, fewer private goods. 

When American politicians or intellectuals promise Nordic welfare states, most people imagine this happening automatically or by taxing the rich and everybody benefits. That’s not the case. The real Nordic model taxes earners more (45 per cent in Denmark, 40 in Norway, 41 in Sweden, compared to 25 per cent in the United States) and charging flat value added tax (“VAT”). Broad welfare states require broad tax bases; Nordic welfare states are financed not by billionaires but by ordinary workers. The “free” benefits are bought with invasive and regressive consumption taxes (up to 25 percent), payroll taxes and income taxes that reach well and that begin after just $10,000 (the first $16,000 is tax free in the US). 

An American professional, pocketing the median earnings of about $65,000, would pay over $17,000 in Norwegian income taxes (compared to about $5,000 per the IRS calculator, naturally subject to state taxes and various deductions), with the employer forced to chip in another $9,200 for the privilege of merely hiring him/her. From what’s left over, he/she faces a high cost of living and sales taxes between 11 per cent and 25 per cent. 

Were she/he in Sweden, a much poorer country with wages well below Norway’s, our middle-of-the-road American professional would land himself/herself in the top 20 per cent of earners – though not yet triggering the top 53 per cent (or 64 per cent) marginal tax rates.

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Marius Borg Høiby Released on House Arrest as He Appeals His Rape Conviction – Reunited With His Recovering Mother Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit

In the case of Høiby, it’s a ‘palace arrest’.

The Norwegian Royal Family drama had another development today, as the convicted son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit has been released on house arrest, as he continues to appeal his conviction and sentencing for rape and other charges.

GB News reported:

“Marius Borg Høiby, who was arrested in August 2024, will be transferred from prison and held at a home with an electronic tag for the next four weeks, according to VG.

The outlet said that he will stay in a royal residence near Skaugum, the home of his mother and Crown Prince Haakon. […] ‘During his period of custody with electronic monitoring, Marius Borg Høiby will reside in a property at his disposal in Semsveien. The Crown Prince Couple wishes to support him through his current phase’.”

“Høiby, 29, who has been in custody since February, was found guilty of two counts of rape, domestic abuse and other offences and sentenced to four years in prison last month. He was also acquitted of two counts of rape.”

Høiby appealed the convictions, while the state prosecutor appealed the sentencing.

Also today (16), his mother, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, had been discharged from the hospital after undergoing a lung transplant last month.

“According to Are Holm, Head of the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet, Mette-Marit’s condition is ‘as good as can be expected’. Meanwhile, the Crown Princess released a statement saying she is ‘deeply grateful’ and has been ‘given the gift of life’.”

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Norwegian study shows that 74% of new myocarditis cases were related to COVID-19 vaccination – only 4.2% were related to COVID-19 infection

Myocarditis – inflammation of the heart muscle – is a “serious condition” and a frequent cause of sudden death in young, apparently healthy people, with a 50–60% mortality rate “after five years.” The statement by Prof. Jan Erik Nordrehaug is somewhat outdated, but later research by Mi-Jeong Kim and colleagues shows the same trend with a mortality rate of approximately 40% after 10 years (see the article’s Figure 3 below).

As early as April 2021, the European Medicines Agency suspected that the COVID-19 vaccine could cause myocarditis, but Pfizer/BioNTech still decided to approve it for children as young as 12 years old. This is despite the fact that the vaccine had not even been tested for transmission and that practically no children die from COVID-19 infection. Later research has strengthened the Agency’s suspicions of an increased incidence of myocarditis among COVID-19 vaccine recipients, especially young men.

Dramatic numbers from Norway

A recently published Norwegian study by Bendik Skinningsrud Hagen and colleagues also shows that COVID-19 vaccination is particularly associated with myocarditis in young men (see figure 2 below in the article, which shows the incidence in men and women). What is most surprising, however, is that the vaccine causes 74% of cases (the article’s figure 1 shows 177 cases compared to 108 others, of which 42 are excluded because myocarditis occurred before vaccination and 4 are due to misdiagnosis). The authors claim that most were “mild” – let’s hope so – but Nordrehaug’s statement that the mortality rate is 50-60% “after five years”, and the figure from Mi-Jeong Kim and colleagues showing low mortality in the first years that then increases, tells us that we do not yet have the full picture.

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Under Pressure by Congress, Bill Gates Names the 3 Women He Had Affairs With, and Jeffrey Epstein Tried To Blackmail Him Over – Plus: the Nobel Prize and the Norwegian Connection

It’s not just about the sex.

Two weeks ago, the US House Oversight Committee grilled tech billionaire Bill Gates over his association with late convicted sex offender and suspected human trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – and came out with new information over Gates’ affairs and Epstein’s efforts to blackmail him.

Yesterday, the transcripts of his testimony were released, showing the former richest man in the world named three women he had extramarital affairs with, two of them Russian.

The Telegraph reported:

“The billionaire Microsoft co-founder told the House oversight committee that he had affairs with two Russian women, naming them as Mila Antonova, a bridge player, and Karima Nigmatulina, a nuclear physicist.

Mr. Gates later admitted to a third extramarital affair with another female scientist [Dr Alice Jacobs Nesselrodt] following scrutiny from US congressmen during the hours-long testimony on June 10, a transcript published on Tuesday revealed.”

He continues to deny ever seeing Epstein’s abuse, repeating his line that it was “a mistake to spend time with him”.

He as much as admitted to having confided in a mutual friend of his and Epstein’s that ‘he feared he may have caught a sexually transmitted disease from one of the women’.

“In his closed-door testimony delivered to the US Congress, he suggested that Epstein “contemplated blackmailing me” after learning of his unfaithfulness with the two Russian women.

[…] Mr. Gates, who testified to Congress voluntarily, insisted that while Epstein did not successfully blackmail him about the affairs, ‘it looks like Mr. Epstein’s brainstorming was going in that direction’.”

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Son of Norway Crown Princess, Marius Hoiby Is Convicted of Rape and Several Other Crimes, and Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison

Prosecutors called him as a man who ‘thinks he can do whatever he wants.’

Another chapter has closed in the saga of the 29-year-old son of the Crown Princess of Norway, Marius Hoiby, as he is found guilty of two counts of rape and is sentenced to four years in prison.

Hoiby is the Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s son from a previous relationship, before her 2001 marriage to Crown Prince (heir to the Crown) Haakon of Norway.

The Telegraph reported:

“Marius Borg Høiby had been accused of a total of 40 charges, from rape to traffic violations, carrying a maximum possible sentence of 16 years in prison.

Three judges cleared him of two other counts of rape. But they found him guilty of many other offences, which included filming a woman’s genitals without her consent, abuse and breaking a restraining order.”

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Norwegian Teenager Allegedly Recruited by Swedish Gang Linked to Iran – Gets Arrested and Prosecuted in the UK for Attempting to Carry Out a Murder for Hire

Another aspect of the migrant invasion in Northern Europe.

We have been reporting here on TGP about the rising criminality in the Scandinavian countries, with migrant gangs in Sweden and Norway taking the law enforcement challenges to unprecedented levels.

One of the commons features of these gangs is their use of minors for criminal acts. Usually, we see teens from migrant backgrounds – but now, it appears their reach has widened.

News arose today of a court session in which a white, middle-class looking Norwegian teenager is being charged with travelling to Britain to carry out a murder for hire.

The defendant was allegedly recruited by a ​Swedish organized crime group with ties to the Iranian government, prosecutors told a London court.

Reuters reported:

“Johannes Natland, now 19, was arrested in a hotel room in Huddersfield in northern England in March last year ​in possession of two firearms and ammunition, prosecutor Alistair Richardson ​told London’s Old Bailey Court.

‘He had been recruited by an ⁠organization called the Foxtrot Network to an agreement that in ​return for money he would travel here and undertake a hit’, Richardson ​said. ‘The group that had recruited him, the Foxtrot Network, is a Swedish organized crime group used by the Iranian regime’.”

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Norway Lobbies To Persuade EU To Drop Arctic Drilling Ban

Norway, Western Europe’s top oil and gas producer, has intensified lobbying at the European Union to persuade the bloc to remove or tweak its moratorium on Arctic oil and gas drilling.

Norway, which is not a member of the EU but is the biggest gas supplier to European markets, has sent nearly a dozen of its ministers to Brussels so far this year to discuss energy and trade and the state of the Arctic drilling.

The Iran war and the biggest oil and gas supply disruption in history have added to Norway’s arguments that Europe needs reliable supply from places outside of conflict zones.

However, the EU’s moratorium enacted in 2021 due to the bloc’s climate commitments and environmental concerns, does not allow drilling in Norway’s northern parts of the Barents Sea, which is estimated to contain most of the remaining Norwegian oil and gas resources.

“Norway is very active and good at making its voice heard,” the EU’s special envoy for the Arctic, Claude Veron-Reville, told Bloomberg in an interview this week.

“Norway knows very well how to intervene, they are very well organized and very present,” Veron-Reville added.

Norway argues that an arbitrary line defining the Arctic area shouldn’t be viewed as the cut-off line for oil and gas drilling.

“There are no climate arguments for treating oil and gas produced north and south of a certain line differently,” Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told Bloomberg.

Norway’s lobbying efforts clash with this week’s call of dozens of Scandinavian financial institutions which urged the European Commission to remain firm in its opposition to Arctic oil drilling even as the bloc could face physical oil shortages in weeks.

The EU could unlock 3.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of natural gas, or about 22 trillion cubic feet, if it rethinks its Arctic policy, Norway-based consultancy Rystad Energy said early this year.

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Scandal at Norwegian hospital as Libyan doctor revealed to be behind several deaths and injuries, including a case where he accidentally connected a woman’s colon to her vagina

Surgeon Saib Adnan Al-Qadi poses a risk to patient safety after a series of deadly incidents at Sørlandet Hospital in Arendal and will now be restricted in his duties. This was the conclusion of the Norwegian Health Authority after a report from the State Administrator documented several patients who lost their lives and others who suffered extensive injuries.

Information from NRK, cited by Rabulisten, revealed that the surgeon, among other things, connected a woman’s colon to her vagina, so that she later had stool exit through her vagina.

Another patient died after the surgeon operated without having properly read the patient’s medical record beforehand.

Saib Adnan Al-Qadi was reportedly born in Libya and trained in Bulgaria, according to documents from the State Administrator in Agder. This data also revealed that despite not being a specialist in gastrosurgery, Al-Qadi worked as a consultant at the gastrosurgery section at Sørlandet Hospital. He did hold Norwegian authorization as a general surgeon dating back to December 2012.

Profiles for the surgeon on both LinkedIn and Facebook do not appear to have been updated for years, with the LinkedIn profile indicating he was last a general surgeon at a hospital in Denmark, citing exrtensive experience in colon surgery of all things.

The Norwegian Health Inspectorate reviewed a total of seven serious patient cases. Two patients died after stomach operations. Several others had to undergo reoperation at Oslo University Hospital after extensive malpractice.

In one of the most grotesque cases, Al-Qadi operated on a woman who was to have her stoma reversed. Three months later, it was discovered that he had connected her colon to her vagina. The State Administrator writes that he chose to operate despite the high risk, and that afterwards he appeared uncaring and tried to blame the patient and relatives.

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