Oil sector to benefit from Solberg’s re-election

PRIME Minister Erna Solberg became Norway’s first Conservative Party leader in over three decades to be re-elected as a movement to stop further oil exploration in western Europe’s biggest petroleum producer fizzled.

“We won support for four more years because we have delivered on what we have promised and also because we have met tough challenges,” Solberg said at an election rally in Oslo shortly after midnight yesterday.

“Our steady leadership has won the respect of the voters.”

An economic rebound and declining joblessness won over voters in Scandinavia’s richest nation.

The 56-year-old, and the groups of lawmakers who support her, achieved a late summer comeback to stay in power after spending record amounts of oil wealth over the past four years to support the economy amid a slump in crude prices.

Backing for the Green Party, which called for an end to Norwegian petroleum exploration, failed to live up to projections it could emerge as a kingmaker, a development that’s likely to be a relief for the nation’s oil industry.

Norwegians have been increasingly questioning how to reconcile their role as a major oil and gas producer with fighting climate change and whether searching for more petroleum will be profitable in a world where renewable energy is taking over more and more.

The result shows the power of the purse in European elections, after the trauma of the debt crisis and the political upheaval.

Solberg pumped money into an economy that a year after she first took office was pummelled by a slump in oil prices.

Her stimulus programme included becoming Norway’s first premier to take money directly from Norway’s almost $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund to increase the government’s budget.

Solberg defeated an opposition led by the Labour Party, whose leader Jonas Gahr Store struggled to win over an electorate suspicious of his personal wealth and confused by his efforts to woo the centre-right.

Store told supporters the election outcome was a “big disappointment”.