Wealthy but not arrogant

OPINION: I'm writing this column in Norway, writes Tim Shadbolt this week.

It's my first and only ratepayer-funded overseas trip during this term in office.

Crown Minerals, a 100 per cent government-owned agency that does an excellent job managing our nation's oilfields, suggested a delegation from Invercargill should visit Stavanger.

This southern coastal city of 50,000 people doubled its population after the discovery of offshore gas and oilfields. Crown Minerals felt we should find out first hand what the impact on Southland would be if oil and gas were discovered in the Great South Basin.

The first 45 hours of the journey were spent flying or trapped in airports because Heathrow was closed by a storm and 160-knot winds.

As anyone who has made the journey will appreciate, after 20 hours of flying in economy your posterior aches in protest. You sit bolt upright for a while, then slump down in your seat for a while. Then you sit sideways to the left, then sideways to the right, then sideways to the left again. Christians may bless you for "turning the other cheek" but I was simply praying for the journey to end.

After a night in London we finally arrived at Stavanger International Airport.

We were welcomed by city councillor Per Olav Hanssen and Stavanger Mayor Leif Johan Sevland, a courtesy reserved for visiting dignitaries. The mayor has survived in office for 12 years, which is an incredible feat considering he has 67 councillors representing nine political parties. He has an annual budget of $1.2 billion, which is the council's share of income tax. This is steep compared with New Zealand and varies from 12-60 per cent, with a wealthy few paying 75 per cent of their wages to income tax.

The petroleum industry represents 50 per cent of Norway's export earnings, and a high proportion of that is invested in its pension fund, which now has stocks and bonds worth 3000 billion kroners (NZ$1 is about 4 kroners ).

The mayor even joked about their weather, which is similar to Invercargill's.

A drenched and exasperated tourist asked a young lad at a bus stop if it always rained like this in Norway.

"I wouldn't really know", replied the boy, "I'm only 12 years old."

Mayor Sevland also told us about his previous trip to Perth. He met the Norwegian Consul and generously offered to buy lunch for any Norwegians living in the city. He expected no more than 20 would be on his guest list but, flushed with surprise, he had to withdraw his offer when the consul handed him a list with 1200 names on it. Norwegians are similar to Kiwis, they love working abroad, and experience in the petroleum industry gives them the opportunity to travel extensively. Most of the workshops the southern delegation attended were run by those directly involved in the practical nuts and bolts of the hi-tech oil and gas industry.

We went aboard a new $100 million oil rig-servicing ship and received endless lectures on the importance of health and safety. Most of our delegation were overwhelmed by the enormity of the petroleum industry. The scale and complexity defies logic. A single oil platform contains the same amount of steel that would be required to build 15 Eiffel Towers. Norway has dozens of them. This small Nordic nation has a population similar in size to New Zealand's, yet 145,000 workers are directly employed by the oil and gas industry and another 300,000 are indirectly involved. If we do strike oil and gas in the Great South Basin, it will turn our entire country inside out and upside down. Almost every speaker emphasised the importance of education. We will have to build an international school for the children of oil workers and we will have to launch training programmes so that Kiwi workers can gradually take over those jobs. Delegates from Invercargill representing South Port, Invercargill City Council and the private sector have collected a wealth of detailed information. We will present this to a meeting of the Southland Energy Consortium and I am sure that the knowledge we have gained will be widely distributed.

I've never visited Scandinavia before and I was most impressed by their positive attitude and trusting nature. Norway is the only country I've flown into that doesn't require you to fill in an arrival card. The tiny customs office at the airport was empty and looked as though it had been that way for quite some time. It was also refreshing to visit an extremely wealthy nation that seemed so devoid of arrogance or snobbery. Trade union leaders sit around the boardroom table and help devise strategies for the future. They believe in safety and protecting the environment. The only boast I heard was that not a single drop of oil has washed ashore along Norway's magnificent coastline as a result of their oil industry. They have a zero-tolerance policy for drinking and driving and only 200 a year get killed on their roads. We accept 600 deaths as "average". They are intelligent, sophisticated, cultured, liberal and humanitarian.

We can learn a lot from Norway.

» Tim Shadbolt is the mayor of Invercargill.

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