Innlegg - London Energy Meeting 19.desember

Your Royal Highness, Excellences, distinguished delegates.

First of all I would like to thank the government of UK for hosting this meeting in London today. I would also like to express my gratitude to the government of Saudi Arabia for their initiative this summer by hosting a similar meeting in Jeddah and for their involvement in the preparations for this meeting in London.

Energy of all kinds is a key driver for economic growth, both in developing and developed countries. Without access to energy there will by no prosperous future for any of us.

The reports prepared for today’s meeting, as well as today’s speakers, have nevertheless identified some difficult issues related to energy and the link between them.

In my talk, I would like to focus on three of them;

1) The extreme volatility we have experienced in oil prices
2) The negative social impacts for poor people of the spiking oil prices.
3) The negative environmental impact of consumption of energy, within and outside the energy sector itself.

Each of them constitutes a big challenge for all of us. And we cannot solve them alone – a joint international effort is needed. The optimistic view is that both in the papers and in the speeches today there have been pointed to how this can be done through international cooperation.

In my view the most important answer to these challenges is more transparency. We need to improve the quality and availability of key oil market data and information. This includes data on production, consumption and stocks, oil reserves and investment plans and on energy policy. Better information and improved understanding of the paper markets and its influence on the physical oil market are also crucial. 

Improved transparency is the best way to dampen the extreme price volatility in the oil market. With less uncertainty and more predictability consumers and producers will be able to make better decisions. Future demand and future supply of oil will be more in accordance. A more transparent and stable oil market would also help decisions in other part of the “energy scene”, including investments decisions in energy efficiency, renewables and future energy technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS). Thereby, transparency becomes important to our ability to negotiate a sufficiently ambitious international climate change agreement for the post-Kyoto period.

In Norway we have a strong focus on CCS. And we are very happy with the cooperation we have in this area with countries like the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Saudi Arabia. The challenges we face are huge, but we need to succeed in making this a realistic abatement option.

To be able to solve future challenges in the energy field it is also important to build trust and understanding between oil producing and oil consuming countries. Energy independence is unrealistic and the use of this slogan is not helpful in our effort to improve our dialogue. The producers-consumer dialogue should be brought forward within the frame of the International Energy Forum (IEF). Therefore, any future work initiated today should be picked up by the IEF. If we feel the next IEF Ministerial in Mexico is too far away, we might request the meeting to be moved forward to late 2009.

Lastly, I would like to state my support for schemes, like the “Energy for the Poor” initiative, that addresses the energy situation for poor people. The Saudi Arabian initiative at the Jeddah meeting and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech today, makes me optimistic. I would like to share with you that also the Norwegian Government will contribute, however on a more modest scale than indicated by Saudi Arabia and UK.

Thank you very much.