Noorwegen is erop gebrand om de Russische energietijger te temmen (en)

EUOBSERVER / HAMMERFEST - Joint Norway-Russia gas projects in the Barents Sea could help soothe future EU-Russia relations as Norway seeks to export its energy social model eastward.

"Close cooperation between Norway and Russia in this region could be in the interests of both these countries and all of Europe," Norway's energy minister Odd Roger Enosken told EUobserver in Oslo on Tuesday (30 May).

The proposed cooperation is likely to see Norway's state-controlled Statoil and Norsk Hydro help develop Gazprom's massive Stockman gas field in the Arctic Circle in a scheme worth over €30 billion that could start production by 2015.

The project would involve sharing state-of-the art offshore technology with Russia, while encouraging Moscow to take up Norway's new "Integrated Management Plan for the High North" - a key future energy supply zone for Europe and the US.

The Norwegian management plan, adopted by Oslo in April, is designed to maximise oil and gas yields while protecting the Arctic wilderness, safeguarding traditional cod fishing and sharing wealth with local communities.

But the plan also has political content, with Norwegian diplomats explaining that Russian adoption of Nordic environmental and social values in the north could nudge Moscow toward wider European market economy norms.

"A project of this scope is like a marriage for many decades. It requires political trust from both sides," one Norwegian official said.

The country's foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Store, was more explicit while unveiling future Arctic policy in Tromso last November.

Sea of peace

"We want to see the Barents Sea developed into a sea of cooperation, a peace project," he said. "It can become an important northern contribution toward integrating Russia more closely into European cooperation structures."

Norway has honed its Russian diplomacy in a 35-year dispute over an oil-rich 173,000 square kilometre section of the Barents Sea, with talks restarting in 2005 after a two-year hiatus and with burgeoning traffic on the Norway-Russia land border signalling improving post-Cold War relations.

"The [territory dispute] talks have lasted over 30 years, so we will probably have a solution about 30 years from now," another diplomat quipped, in the sanguine Nordic style that stands in contrast to recent provocative US and Polish statements on Moscow's energy policy.

"We see ourselves as a good broker," the official added, with Norwegian experts also helping ease international tension over Bolivia's recent renationalisation of its energy sector and with Oslo to host Sri Lanka conflict resolution talks on 8 June.

Russia and Norway are the EU's two biggest energy suppliers, with Russia feeding 24 percent of Europe's gas demand and 27 percent of oil and Norway shipping 13 percent gas and 16 percent oil.

The stakes are set to rise in future, with US geologists estimating that up to a quarter of the world's so-far undiscovered oil and gas reserves will be found in the Arctic Circle, most of them in Russian territory.

Chalk and cheese

But the two energy supply heavyweights could hardly be more different in terms of EU relations.

Norway, a NATO and European Economic Area member, has been a trusted EU supplier for over 50 years, squirreling away oil cash in vast pension funds and building a social model that sees it top polls as the best place in the world to live.

It's environmental credentials are hard to question - if a sea eagle gets mangled in one of Norway's wind power turbines, the story makes the national news.

Russia broke EU trust in January by stopping gas supplies to EU transit state Ukraine in what many European and US diplomats see as naked political punishment for Ukraine's 2004 pro-western shift.

Bits of Moscow's old nuclear submarine fleet are silently rotting on the Kola Peninsula, while Russian oil tankers criss-crossing Arctic waters are closely watched for oil spills by Norwegian and US satellite stations on the Svalbard archipelago.

"When you see traces of what has been going on with respect to hydrocarbon production in Soviet times, you might be scared," Tromso university geologist Tore Vorren indicated.

"They have not been taking much care of the environment."