Norway’s anti-oil Green Party could hold key to election outcome: DN poll

By Terje Solsvik, Reuters August 23, 2017
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OSLO — Norway‘s Green Party, which seeks to scale back the country’s oil industry, could play a key role in picking its next prime minister, an opinion poll published by financial daily DN showed on Wednesday.

With less than three weeks to go before Sept. 11 parliamentary elections, the Greens’ backing jumped to 6.1 percent from 3.9 percent in a similar June poll and more than double the 2.8 percent it won in 2013.

A Norwegian national flag flies from a vessel near the Scarabeo 8 deepwater oil drilling rig in Olensvag, Norway. MUST CREDIT: Kristian Helgesen, Bloomberg
A Norwegian national flag flies from a vessel near the Scarabeo 8 deepwater oil drilling rig in Olensvag, Norway. (Kristian Helgesen / Bloomberg)

The survey of voters by the Sentio Research agency suggested the Green Party could win 11 seats in Norway‘s 169-seat parliament, up from just one currently.

The ruling right-wing government and its backers would win 81 seats, while the center-left opposition could secure 77, leaving both sides short of the 85 seats required for a majority and turning the unaligned Greens into potential kingmakers.

The party has vowed to extract a high price for its support, demanding an end to oil and gas exploration and seeking to shut existing fields within 15 years, but it may find such objectives hard to achieve.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s Conservatives and opposition leader Jonas Gahr Stoere’s Labour have both rejected the idea of forcing an early end to the oil industry.