Norway and the UK drilled the same North Sea.
🇳🇴Norway got $2 trillion.
🇬🇧The UK got tax cuts.
Same basin,Same era.... Completely different outcomes.
Norway captured $30 per barrel in government revenue. The UK captured $11.
That gap, compounded over 50 years of production, is the entire difference.
Norway's model was simple: tax heavily (78% marginal rate), take direct equity stakes in fields via the SDFI, own part of Equinor, and put everything surplus into a fund invested abroad.
The Government Pension Fund Global now holds over $2 trillion in assets.
That's $390,000 per Norwegian citizen about 1.5% of all listed equities on earth.
The fiscal rule: only spend the 3% annual real return. Never touch the principal.
The UK started producing earlier, at lower prices, with a lower tax rate (40%) and no saving mechanism.
North Sea revenues flowed straight into the general budget.
Economists estimate the UK missed out on roughly £400 billion compared to a Norwegian style regime.
The windfall largely financed tax cuts in the 1980s rather than a fund.
Where things stand in 2026?
Norway's petroleum sector will generate $63 bn in net cash flow this year alone feeding a fund already large enough to cover 10-15% of the national budget from returns alone.
The UK is a net energy importer.
Since 2021 it has paid countries like Norway more than £100 billion for gas.
One country treated oil as a finite resource to convert into permanent financial wealth.
The other treated it as income.
image source:eia
‼️Keir Starmer calls this win 🥴 ?
Out of every £100 you spend at the pump, £50.30 goes straight to the Treasury in tax.
They freeze the duty for a few months and act like heroes while still taking over half your money.
I'm so sick to death of these snakes.
Enough is enough.
After 18 months of “standing up to Putin” the Labour govt quietly issued a licence allowing imports of Russian oil refined in third countries.
Yesterday Labour MPs voted AGAINST UK oil and gas licences.
We are now importing from Russia instead of drilling in the North Sea.
Insane.
Superb from @michaelgove.
The silence in the room is telling.
When eloquently delivered facts hit an audience, with many perhaps quietly grasping for the first time that the pro-EU lobby in Britain have been peddling nonsense for a decade.
Interesting to see who has given Rayner the money so she can pay back the unpaid £40k in tax - a refrigerator business has recently given her 50k... so she can put Starmer on ice...
🧊🧊🧊
If Nigel Farage and Reform hadn’t taken the Government to court and overturned the cancelled elections, 4-5 million of you would not have had the right to vote today. 🗳️
Remember that.
It's NOT corrupt. It's NOT a Boys Club. Nothing underhand. Nothing to see here. All above board.
Except Mandelson, McSweeney, Doyle and the rest, obvs...
Just a reminder. While #Mandelson enjoys tax payers' money for a job which comes with a luxury lifestyle, I was 'investigated' for 13 months, kept from promotion, and excluded by @UKLabour for liking tweets by @Glinner and expressing my view that only women can have a cervix...
Norway collected £50bn from North Sea oil and gas last year.
We collected £4.4bn, having taxed our own producers into closure in pursuit of a #netzero fantasy.
I cannot think of a cleaner example of a government failing its people @Keir_Starmer and @Ed_Miliband
https://t.co/qNr40cl0xZ
Just to be clear... Lord Mandelson, a proven liar, failed security vetting to be the UK's most senior diplomat trusted with vital state and security secrets - but no one at the Foreign Office bothered to tell the PM or anyone else at Number 10 about it.
Do they seriously expect us to believe this claptrap? Just how dumb do they think we are?!
The Prime Minister is either a liar or a fool. Either way, he has to resign.