Norway has a secret weapon to deal with falling oil prices

The World
Norway's energy firm Statoil will cut up to 7 percent of its workforce and a third of its consultants by the end of 2016, State-controlled Statoil plans to cut between 1,100 and 1,500 permanent jobs, adding to cuts of 1,340 since the end of 2013.

The decade-long boom in oil and gas prices is over. Those falling oil prices continue to have major consequences for oil-dependent countries Venezuela and Nigeria.

But other countries are better positioned to ride out low prices. Like Norway, which produces nearly 3 percent of the world's oil supply — less than Russia, the US and the Gulf states, to be sure, but more than most other countries. 

"Norway has been smart," says Jonas Bergman of Bloomberg. "They haven't squandered the money away over the past 40 years and, since 1996, they've been stashing the majority of their oil wealth into a big fund."

The fund, he says, is the biggest in the world. "It’s valued at $870 billion and that's compared to Norway's economy, which is $500 billion. So they have a lot of money that they can now use to back up the economy and support people who are losing their jobs," says Bergman, Bloomberg's Oslo bureau chief.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund is the largest in the world — and its value keeps growing, by virtue of a government policy that limits the government's usage of the fund to just four percent annually. The fund, however, could be the biggest loser in Monday's global stock market selloff — with almost two-thirds of its investments in equities.

And with the current dip in oil prices, the government may be inclined to change the policy to allow access to more of the fund's assets.

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.