From Reuters – March 31, 2011
* Investing in tar sands is up to firm, not state -trade min
* Environmental groups Greenpeace, WWF condemn decision
OSLO, March 31 (Reuters) – Statoil’s majority owner, the
Norwegian state, will not ask the firm to get out of Canada’s
tar sands, killing a proposal at the upcoming annual general
meeting to abandon the controversial oil project.
“There will be no intervention from the Norwegian government
on Statoil’s involvement in oil sands,” Norway’s trade and
industry secretary Trond Giske told Norwegian daily Dagens
Naeringsliv on Thursday.
“We have concluded that investing in oil sands is a decision
that is not up to us as an owner. This is a decision for the
company.”
The Norwegian state owns 67 percent of Statoil’s shares.
Green groups Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund For Nature
(WWF) have for several years campaigned for Statoil (STL.OL: Quote) to
pull out of its Kai Koh Dehseh project in Alberta, which it
bought in 2007 in order to diversify from its ageing North Sea
oilfields.
Earlier this month the groups scheduled a motion for
Statoil’s AGM on May 19 calling on the company to avoid
exploiting the Canadian soil saturated with bitumen.
[ID:nLDE6491O0] It was the third year in a row they did so.
They have the backing of several Statoil investors,
including major Norwegian insurer Storebrand (STB.OL: Quote).
“Unfortunately the Norwegian government has decided to
ignore a key issue in the climate debate, which is what
resources it is possible to base our future energy production
on,” Rasmus Hansson, head of WWF Norway, told Reuters.
“The production and use of tar sands produce such massive
amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that they will make it
absolutely impossible to stay below the 2 degrees (increase in
global temperature targeted by the UN).”
Canada’s oil sands represent the largest crude reserves
outside Saudi Arabia. That and the country’s relative political
stability have attracted Statoil and a host of other foreign
investors.
But environmentalists are highly critical of the impact of
development on air, land, water and local communities.
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche; editing by James Jukwey)
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