Newt and Callista Gingrich recently spent several days playing tourist in Norway and have become convinced that this beautiful Scandinavian nation provides an excellent role model for other regarding the compatibility of conservation, environmental protection and responsible (and very successful) energy development.We visited an island with 1.3 million puffins, watched reindeer running five feet away from us through a fishing village (it was startling), saw sea eagles which are enormous and were once endangered but have had a huge comeback. There are now 2,500 pairs of sea eagles in Norway due to ending the use of the pesticides which were decimating them (proving, in good Green Conservative fashion, that there are good environmental causes).
All of this in a country that has made itself the 10th largest oil and gas producer in the world by doing something that is virtually off limits in the United States: Drilling offshore for oil and gas.
The United States was a leader in the creation of the offshore drilling industry in the 1950s and early 1960s, but today it's countries like Norway that are leaders in the field. Norway's annual output of 1.6 billion barrels of oil comes exclusively from offshore drilling. Oil and natural gas are transported through a network of sub seafloor pipelines. Norway is the home to the world's largest natural gas drilling platform.
And the truly remarkable fact is that Norway has built this robust offshore oil and gas drilling industry alongside large and thriving fishing and tourism industries. Norway has avoided the "everywhere versus nowhere" trap that has paralyzed U.S. offshore drilling through a common sense approach that is textbook Green Conservatism.
In Norway, strong environmental protections were part of exploration, drilling and transportation of oil and natural gas from the outset. This initial environmental emphasis has built the sense of trust necessary to allow Norway to move to a cooperative, performance-based model rather than a regulation-based model like we have in the U.S.
Norway has relatively few laws, regulations and government agencies that govern offshore drilling. Their equivalent of our Supreme Court - the Hoyesterett - reportedly declined jurisdiction over offshore drilling on the grounds that it lacks expertise!
The result is a policy in which environmental concerns are carefully balanced with energy needs. Norwegians have put some areas off-limits to drilling. In some areas, drilling is carefully circumscribed. But the point is that drilling occurs. Environmental concerns have informed - not pre-empted-Norway's oil and gas industry...
The entire article (and very interesting reading it is too) is here.
