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Comment by MandieD | Hacker News Reader

Unlike just about every other major oil producer (my own home country, the US, included), Norway has strictly followed the rule, "never get high on your own supply." Fuel has long been more heavily taxed than in, say, Germany, which already has relatively high fuel taxes, and only a small percentage of the petroleum revenues received by the government are allowed to be spent directly (something like 4%, if I remember right). The rest has gone into that enormous sovereign wealth fund for the day the party ends.

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For people looking how not to handle enormous wealth like this, look up the Groningen gas field in the Netherlands[0].

It undoubtedly provided a lot of money which helped build our infrastructure and the Netherlands wouldn't be what it is today without it - it also shows exactly what happens when the generated revenues are spent immediately. Now that the gas supply has been turned off (due to earthquakes and the government's terrible handling of those), we are scrambling to look for other streams of revenue and other gas sources (because our home heating infrastructure is largely gas based).

As someone living in Groningen, the way the government handled this is a major reason why most people I know (and myself included) have mostly lost their faith in politics and the national government as a whole.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field

In economics, the phenomenon of a country making worse policy, business and investment decisions after discovering a massive source of natural resources is known as "Dutch disease"...

Interesting!

From wikipedia:

The presumed mechanism is that while revenues increase in a growing sector (or inflows of foreign aid), the given economy's currency becomes stronger ("appreciates") compared to foreign currencies (manifested in the exchange rate). This results in the country's other exports becoming more expensive for other countries to buy, while imports become cheaper, altogether rendering those sectors less competitive.

So the Netherlands should be thankful for the Euro, which took away those effects on their local currency.

> Norway has strictly followed the rule, "never get high on your own supply."

While historically true, we're approaching an era where it no longer is.

Our oil fund was set up such that the government could only ever spend at most 3% of the annual yield[1]. This seemed like a conservative approach, however it seems they didn't take into account just how large the fund would get. As such, even using less than the 3% limit, the oil fund money constitutes a large fraction of the national budget.

In the national budget for 2025, the oil money pays for 20% of non-oil expenses[2], and it's just increasing each year.

As such it does seem we're starting to get high on our own supply, just in a more roundabout way.

[1]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...

[2]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/statsbudsjett/2025/statsbudsje...

[3]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...

Name another oil producer that can fully cover it's local demand with hydro power.

Canada, probably could, if not for the exception incompetence of it's leadership over decades.

That's debatable - Quebec generates close to 50% of Canada's Hydro power and has been part of world leaders in the field. The province has been pretty competent in the past decades - of course with challenges - but the rest of Canada would be lost without Hydro-Quebec being behind most projects and investments (expertise, management, financing...)

Ontario has lots of hydro including Niagara Falls, BC has the new site C.

What I’m saying is Canada has the potential to generate more hydroelectricity but environmental concerns largely delay or prevent further expansion.

There's a difference between "make sure local energy needs are provided for" and "encourage overuse and expansion of local energy needs by barely taxing" (the US, and to a lesser degree, Canada), or even "subsidizing overuse via artificially-low prices" (much of OPEC).

If the requirement you set is a hard limit on hydro, then sure, few nations could qualify.

But if you instead ask for "another oil producer that could fully cover it's local demand with energy sources not from hydrocarbons" a lot more nations would be included in the answer such as United Kingdom which has abundant wind, decent solar, some nuclear, and some potential hydro.

I can name several that can cover significant part of local demand with solar power. Or perhaps they'd have energy storage to fully cover it by now had they invested into that.

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