ABSTRACT
The government accordingly faces problems in committing itself in a credible way not to introduce extraordinary taxation when times are particularly good. An underlying media reality is that, as oil prices and the US dollar exchange rate against the Norwegian krone rise, it will be tempting for journalists to assert that private interests and foreigners are capturing an excessive share of Norway’s petroleum wealth. The fact that the same investors lose money in bad times is not such an interesting subject to write about. These features of political constraints are by no means unique to the Norwegian petroleum sector – which has a very favourable score on indices of political risk. They apply generally to petroleum and mining countries.
