OSLO: Norway should use the dividend from its 67 percent stake in Statoil ASA, the nation’s biggest crude producer, to fund a program to save oil jobs, according to the country’s largest engineers union.
Norway, western Europe’s biggest crude producer, faces a slowdown that’s already pushed unemployment to the highest level since at least 2006. Unemployment among engineers has tripled in the last year, according to the Norwegian Society of Engineers and Technologists. As many as 40,000 oil and gas jobs could disappear out of about 250,000 nationwide.
“We have hinted to the government the idea to take the share money from Statoil and put it back into the market,” Trond Markussen, president of NITO, said in an interview in Oslo. “We could take the dividend and use that for improvement within the oil industry and maybe for some green projects.”
Markussen last week met with Finance Minister Siv Jensen to discuss measures the government could take to secure jobs as Norway adjusts to a slowdown in the oil and gas industry.
“We haven’t gotten any concrete feedback” on the suggestion, Markussen said. “The government is aware it needs to take action and they’re prepared to — but my members say they need this to happen now.”
The Finance Ministry was not immediately available for comment.
Prime Minister Erna Solberg said Monday that next year’s budget will be focused on “the transformation of the Norwegian economy,” including “fighting unemployment.”
What the economy needs is a way to fill the gap left by the oil-price downturn prior the startup of the Johan Sverdrup field, Norway’s biggest offshore project in decades, he said.
The government and companies should work together to fund training programs that prepare unemployed engineers to work outside the oil industry, such as road work and in municipalities, where there is a shortage, Markussen said.
