Norway Wants Europe’s Energy Market, Without Sharing Its Trade-Offs

Norway is supposedly breaking with Brussels. Energy Minister Terje Aasland says the country will continue exploring for oil and gas in the Barents Sea despite European Union support for an Arctic drilling moratorium. He has also dismissed the old ambition for Norway to become Europe’s “green battery” as a flawed idea. Placed together, the statements create a compelling political story: a sovereign energy producer finally resisting European climate restrictions and refusing to sacrifice its reservoirs for an unreliable continental…