This is not a sensible comparison. Norway produces 313,661 barrels per day per million people, which is higher than all other countries besides Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Australia produces 12,010 bbl/day/millon-people, i.e., just 3.8% of Norway's per capita production.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
The extreme amount of mineral wealth that each Norwegian citizen has inherited makes Norway very difficult to compare to non-Arab countries on any issue connected to economics (i.e., basically everything).
Relatedly, the cost of living in Norway is much higher than Australia, despite Australia's extreme remoteness.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_by_country.js...
My bet is Uranium is going to be an important one too in the future.
https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/
Next time, consider looking the number up yourself and reporting back rather than just asking the question and so forcing me to look up the answer for you (or else look like I'm ignoring the issue).
Norway exports about $50 billion USD / year. Australia exports about $120 billion USD / year.
This is probably why the Australian is comparing the situation with Norway.
https://www.minister.industry.gov.au/ministers/frydenberg/sp...
https://www.norskpetroleum.no/en/production-and-exports/expo...
Again, I think this works out to a per capita endowment of that is still much, much larger for Norway, but you'd actually have to do a bit of work to check.
IMO you're on a hiding to nothing trying to support your position that the comparison isn't valid. The economic export situation is structurally quite similar between Norway and Australia, and the difference in how they've handled it is vast, far greater than any multiple in population.
And, if it comes down to it, we can pull near-unlimited quantities from seawater at $200-1000 per kg (~10x current pricing). The costs of nuclear power generation are almost entirely capital costs and insurance, the fuel costs are practically a rounding error, so this does not substantially change the costs of nuclear power generation.
https://www.newsdeeply.com/oceans/articles/2018/06/28/the-nu...
So, uranium will probably never be super valuable. Strategically important, and nice to have in a conveniently accessible form, but not economically valuable.
Would be way easier to understand the comparison if the notation would be the same on both numbers. I assume bbl means billions of barrels, this means Australia's number is higher by few orders.
You should not look at just oil, but natural resources in general (in case of Australia, iron, coal and gold in particular).
Norway still comes out on top, but only by a factor of ~2 (cf https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/nor/ https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/aus/ ).
Australia's top exports are also based on natural resources, namely, Iron Ore, Coal Briquettes, Gold and Petroleum Gas, accounting for 60% of all exports at $144.6B. Assuming a population of 24.6M, this translates to $5.9k per person.
Point is, while Australia isn't quite as well off as Norway, there are resources aplenty to pull off something similar on a somewhat smaller scale.
Metals is an interesting case because on the one hand they are definitely a non-renewable resource. On the other hand, it seems like there's a difference between exporting ore and exporting refined metals, in terms of whether it's "just" resource extraction or not...
Iron ore extraction isn't bad but it's nowhere near as profitable as Norway's oil extraction
You'd have to do that across the entire range of resources and then divide per capita - on that basis I think Norway would blow by 4x Australia just based on off-the-top of my head estimate
Statoil makes huge margins on their oil because once the tricky rig was set up, it just comes out like Gold.
Most other natural resources have much thinner margins due to processing, overhead.
'Sweet Crude' i.e. the kind you get in the desert, and 'sweet once it's setup to be' i.e. Statoil ... this is a different thing together from other natural resources.
Norway is like Kuwait, it's almost impossible to compare it to anything else.
They can leave the Oil in the ground for now because they are very rich and have more money than they know what to do with.
As far as I'm aware, profit margins on iron aren't too shabby either, though I'd have to do some digging how this all shapes up in these specific cases (Norwegian oil vs Australian gold, iron and coal).
They are fortunate that they are one of the few countries with functional government that could handle the oil wealth responsibly.
If you compare it to the United States, we socialize many of the risks associated with oil production, refining and transport, and let the extractors, refiners, and transporters reap the benefits.
Currently private sector and foreign business takes the risk. Then Australia gets a share of the profits through royalties and taxes as well as the labour income through employment of workers.
Which represents a tiny amount of value compared to the energy stored in the oil.
Australia provided mineral exploration incentives of $31m for 2018/19 at the tax payer’s expense, to mitigate that risk.
https://www.financeminister.gov.au/media-release/2018/06/26/...
Per http://www.worldstopexports.com/coal-exports-country/ in 2017 Australia exported $40.6 billion of coal, for a population of ~25 million. Per http://www.worldstopexports.com/iron-ore-exports-country/ it also exported $49.3 billion of iron ore. Per http://www.worldstopexports.com/gold-exports-country/ it also exported $13.1 billion of gold. Just between those three items that works out to ~$4k per person for the year.
Per http://www.worldstopexports.com/worlds-top-oil-exports-count... Norway exported $26 billion of oil, for a population of ~5 million. So about $5k per person for the year.
Now both countries do other resource-extraction stuff too. Norway's natural gas exports are almost equal to their oil exports, as far as I can tell. Australia's annual exports of natural gas seem to be in the $40-$50 billion range depending on the year you look at (it's grown a lot recently). And Australia is doing a bunch of non-iron-ore and non-gold mining too (gems come to mind).
Overall, per capita resource extraction revenue in Norway is certainly higher than in Australia, but it's not the "25x" higher than the oil numbers alone would indicate. Maybe 2x.
The point is that Norway has managed it's natural advantages to the benefit all of their citizens compared to other countries whose resources primarily enrich individual companies/owners.
Where the Norwegians could appreciate what the sovereign fund meant for them, the attempt in Australia was lambasted as another tax, copped serious lobbying by mining giants, etc.
However if they would introduce such a tax now then it might encourage new mining developments and let them be sped through the environmental checks faster than they are now. So there is a danger we would have many more Adani like mines popped up.
Though yet again maybe having a high enough mining tax would possible discourage such endeavours?
I think its the notion that all the provinces are competing against each other, and that under any oil program some provinces will win and other lose that really holds us back. No one can see that we can all win by collectively working together. It doesn't help at all that there are now moneyed corporate interested involved that are not interested in seeing any changes take place.
As someone from Ontario, I wouldn't even care about it being federalized as long as it was better "provincialized":
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Heritage_Savings_Trust...
At the very least only payout dividends on a portion of the returns on investment from the fund:
Because Norway's oil is more profitable, it can be taxed much more heavily. If you were to tax the tarsands at the same rate, it would put the companies out of business.
"While royalty rates in Newfoundland are the highest in Canada, in Alberta they have fallen from a 40 per cent high during the 1970s to less than four per cent, and a complex system of exemptions ensures companies often pay even less."
That's insane.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/oct/...
We are literally bending over backwards to subsidize and prop up a rounding error in our economy.
Right now, 33 million people have to suffer, and pay more for energy, because one province is increasing its carbon output.
Edit: I am not a bastard, and I fully think that other provinces need to financially help Alberta disentangle itself from the tar sands. But it needs to be ready to accept this help, first.
You might be surprised. Last election we saw spots of orange and red appear in what was once always blue. Demographic change appears to be moving against the Conservatives and the oil industry.
Not "Canada", but the province of Alberta. Norway is a 'monolithic' country, but Canada has federalism where the provinces have jurisdiction over certain areas.
And Alberta did/does have a fund, but over the decades various governments (generally Conervative) have decided not to really invest into it:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Heritage_Savings_Trust...
Is that true? Norway has a 78% tax on profits from the oil companies.
(For instance, there's a 14% employment tax, 25% VAT, car taxes that increase vehicle purchase cost by 100% and fuel cost by 200%, toll roads that are impossible to avoid during daily errands, 0.85% annual net worth tax, 31% capital gains tax, property taxes and municipal taxes, and that's without getting into extra taxes for luxury products or how corporate profits are taxed).