Oil for development: annual report 2009

This annual report presents some of the activities and key achievements of the Norwegian initiative “Oil for Development” that took place in 2009. The main aim of the initiative is to generate economic growth and promote welfare for the population in an environmentally sustainable way.

The paper indicates that Norwegian approach to the petroleum sector management is broad, as it includes environmental and revenue management. It clarifies that Norway is building capacity within government institutions, but it also supports civil society and the media so they can monitor their governments.

The paper registers the following findings on the initiative’s progress in 2009:

• the initiative continued to concentrate its main efforts on a limited number of countries, and the largest part of its funding went to some nine countries of core cooperation
• assistance has been offered for the ability of some partners to improve petroleum resource management on their important oil and gas fields
  
• partners have also been assisted to improve safeguarding; the petroleum activities were conducted in an environmentally conservative way
• competence building on Increased Oil Recovery (IOR), and negotiation training have helped to increase both the resource extraction potential and the revenue generation potential for some other countries
• the initiative has contributed to improving the legislative frameworks in several cooperating countries
• a lot of capacity building took place through seminars and more tailored workshops with a national or regional scope, and petroleum related environmental issues were addressed at different levels.
  

The paper concludes that each country has its own particular challenges and there are no quick fixes. Nevertheless, the paper argues that time, patience and many factors beyond the initiative’s control are required to turn oil in the ground into broad-based improvements in livelihoods.