Gullfaks from the SDFI to Statoil and Petoro

The changes in April 2001 in a sense made the Norwegian oil industry less state-owned. The same applied to the Gullfaks licence.

The partial privatization of Statoil meant that one-third of what had until then been a fully state-owned company was placed on the financial market. The SDFI – the State’s Direct Financial Interest – was replaced by Petoro. Some of the SDFI’s previous ownership interests were sold.

For the Gullfaks licence, this meant that while the SDFI’s share had been 73 percent, Petoro’s share became only 30 percent. Statoil’s share increased correspondingly, from 18 to 61 percent.

“Gullfaks ‘came home’” to Statoil, in the sense that the company now once again held the largest ownership stake, as it had in the beginning. At the same time, Statoil did not receive any blank cheque. The company still had to obtain support from at least one of the other partners. They therefore still needed either Petoro or Norsk Hydro on board. The latter’s ownership stake remained at 9 percent.

“State-owned” and “Norwegian” were still two dominant characteristics of the Gullfaks licence, but after the partial privatization and stock exchange listing, one could also add “private” and “foreign” as more or less central characteristics.