It was Finansavisen who reported this on 28 October: “The oil fund has missed out on 6 billion at the Caterpillar party in the USA”.
Formally, it is the Ethics Council under the leadership of Svein Richard Brandtzæg who wrote in recommendations on 25 June and 2 July that the Ethics Council recommends excluding Caterpillar from the Government’s pension fund abroad “due to an unacceptable risk that the company contributes to serious violations of individuals’ rights in war or conflict situations”.
The trigger is that Caterpillar produces bulldozers that the Israeli authorities use to demolish houses in the Gaza Strip. Norges Bank‘s executive board announced the decision at the end of August. The decision created a political stir in the United States.
Hans Geelmuyden
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Hans Geelmuyden is a Norwegian public debater, journalist, writer, commentator and former editor-in-chief of Morgenbladet. He is a civil economist from NHH, and has built, managed, owned and sold Geelmuyden Kiese Gruppen. On January 16, 2025, he started a one-man consulting company called St. Hans.
Politics and morality
The background for the ban is political. The left wing under the leadership of the Socialist Left Party has long sought to use the Oil Fund politically.
On its website, the Socialist Left Party writes that “The Minister of Finance must instruct Norges Bank immediately to withdraw the Oil Fund from Israel’s war and occupation”.
The party also believes that the Oil Fund must get out of “companies that support the illegal occupation”. This became a hot potato in the election campaign, and on 7 August Finance Minister Stoltenberg wrote in Aftenposten that he has asked Norges Bank and the Ethics Council for a “renewed review of all the Oil Fund’s investments in Israeli companies”.
Jens Stoltenberg writes in Aftenposten about the Oil Fund’s investments in Israel: “The Oil Fund’s ethical guidelines must be observed”. In other words, the political pressure against the fund and Norges Bank was formidable.
Should the Oil Fund create the greatest possible return, or promote Norway’s ethical values? This topic was the talk of the day. Read the discussion in the comments section below.
After the election in September, party leader Kirsti Bergstø in the Socialist Left Party issued an ultimatum that the party would not start negotiations with the government on the state budget for 2026, unless the Oil Fund sells out of all the sixteen companies the UN suspects contribute to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
In the election campaign, Bergstø appeared in mosques to recruit voters to the party with the same promise. In this sense, it was an embarrassing breach of promise when it became known that the Socialist Left Party will negotiate the state budget with the government anyway. Her posing could not withstand the encounter with reality.
“The pension fund is not a political instrument”
From the end of 2023 until the end of August this year, the Oil Fund has sold down from 76 to 33 Israeli companies.
On 23 October, Finance Minister Stoltenberg called a closed meeting. In the meeting, the finance minister stated that “the pension fund is not a political instrument”, and that “the Ethics Council’s guidelines are aimed at companies, not at states”. He announced that “the time has come to review the ethical framework and its practice”.
In addition, I think the time has come to discuss whether Norway has acquired a state morality, and whether it is up to the Socialist Left Party to define it.
Also read: Will anyone be able to take the Oil Fund?
Intelligent management also a moral responsibility
Politics has always been about morality. The problem in Norway is that the Norwegian state has become so large that the politicians become the guardians of morality.
It is very problematic because our politicians at the same time act as moral poseurs who also moralize with their own population. Increasingly, we experience politicians who use the people’s money to shine themselves, and shine internationally.
The exclusion of Caterpillar is a good example. The hard drive from the Socialist Left Party cost the Norwegian people NOK six billion. At the time of writing, the fund is at NOK 21,003 billion, so we can withstand the loss. The point is that intelligent management of the fund for the benefit of the entire Norwegian people is also a moral responsibility.
Also read: SV opens to fell Støre
Norway in a nutshell
Norway has become the stronghold of dispositional ethics in the world. Temperament ethics is an ethical theory that evaluates an action based on the intention or motive behind it, rather than the consequences or the action itself.
This means that the action can be considered morally good if it is done with a good attitude – that is, with good intentions. As long as something is well intended, in other words, it makes little difference if the consequence was that it went to hell.
This is Norway in a nutshell in 2025.
Also read: It’s getting more expensive and worse
We mean so well!
We mean well when we want to fight youth crime with more leisure clubs. In Norway, we naturally side with the Palestinians in the conflict with Israel, because it is right to side with the weak anyway.
The intention is the best when we allocate 53 billion for aid in 2026, or when we have to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by 55 percent until 2030, whatever the cost!
The motives are the best when the Storting decides to increase taxes and duties in order to redistribute and create even more equality. But does it work?
We have a prime minister who lies. We have a political right and left that are suspicious of each other. We lash out at the leader of a political youth party when she tries to argue for the rights of unborn life. We have a royal house that is morally shipwrecked, and a democratic system that increasingly struggles to make decisions that have both legitimacy and broad acceptance.
Read more by Hans Geelmuyden here
Moral rearmament
For a long time, the country has been ruled by career politicians, consultants and bureaucrats who live by and for the systems, but not by reality.
Now we need a new generation of political leaders with a backbone and a heart for truth. People who understand that responsibility is individual, not collective.
The politicians must understand that they have to do a job for us who have elected them. Norway cannot save the world, but Norwegian politicians can make Norway a better country to live in.
Good intentions are not enough. Not a waste of money either. It’s the results that count!
