Norway Oil Riches at Stake as Political Brinkmanship Rules

Investors in Norway, western Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, face more political wrangling as the level of brinkmanship in lawmaking picks up.

The minority coalition, in office since October, is Norway’s first in almost a decade to rely on opposition parties to push through laws. Those include how to manage the nation’s $880 billion sovereign wealth fund and how to develop key offshore oil projects. The composition of the legislature means stakeholders in Norway’s affairs must gird for “some disturbances,” Finance Minister Siv Jensen said yesterday in an interview in Oslo.