In 1970, Joni Mitchell sang “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. Forty-five years later, it is a sentiment widely felt in Norway.
Oil’s unexpected collapse from $110 to $45 per barrel last year proved an ice-cold shower for the country’s five million people who had started to grow complacent that its economic engine was unstoppable. Insulated by its sovereign wealth fund worth $900bn and growing at a record rate, their self-confidence was understandable.
