http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-02/norway-oil-riches-at-stake-as-political-brinkmanship-sets-agenda.html
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.
Investors in Scandinavia’s richest nation have been wrong-footed a few times in the past three years, most notably when the government in 2011 withdrew Eksportfinans ASA’s state backing, turning top-rated bonds into junk notes. Then in 2013, investors balked at a decision to cut gas distribution tariffs, a move they said sliced as much as $6.5 billion off their income.
The Labor government that pushed through those measures is now the largest party in the opposition bloc. “The decision-making process takes a little longer time than it has been for the last eight years with a majority government,” Jensen said.
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