The Fund We Didn't Build, Norway found oil at the same time as the UK. One of them saved the money.
There are queues at the filling stations in Douglas this week. Local media on the Island is reporting diesel at 185p a litre in Castletown on Sunday -- against 137.9p at the pump a week earlier. The cause is straightforward: conflict around the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes, and an island at the end of a long supply chain with no refinery, limited storage, and no buffer.
This is what energy dependency looks like at street level.
Norway discovered oil in 1969
The same year the UK was beginning to map the North Sea. Both countries found roughly the same thing: an enormous offshore hydrocarbon resource that would generate revenues for decades.
Norway made a decision early on. Revenue from oil and gas would be used cautiously, invested abroad, and preserved for future generations. In 1990 the Norwegian parliament created what is now the Government Pension Fund Global. The first deposit was made in 1996.
At the end of 2025, the fund’s market value was approximately NOK 21,268 billion -- roughly £1.6 trillion. That is around NOK 3.8 million per registered person in Norway, or approximately £270,000 per citizen. The fund owns approximately 1.5% of every listed company on earth.
Norway can draw down up to 3% of the fund per year to finance public expenditure. The 2026 budget proposes spending only 2.8%, financing over a quarter of all public expenditure. The rest stays in the fund and grows.
The UK made a different decision
Between 1975 and 1985, North Sea receipts increased rapidly, reaching a then record high of £12 billion -- 3.1% of GDP. That revenue went into general expenditure. Tax cuts. Current spending. The costs of deindustrialisation. Then it ran down.
UK government revenues from oil and gas production decreased from their peak of £12.4 billion in 2008-09 to £0.3 billion in 2020-21, with negative net revenues in two years within that period.
No fund was ever created. The receipts went in, the receipts came out, and nothing was put aside.
By the end of 2024, a total of 47.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent had been produced from the UK continental shelf. The remaining estimate is around 9.2 billion barrels -- roughly 19% of what has already been extracted. Under current policy, no new licences for oil and gas exploration will be issued.
The energy industry’s own verdict
The argument that domestic production has no role is no longer held even by the clean energy sector. Jürgen Maier, chair of Great British Energy -- the government’s own publicly owned energy company -- backed continued production from existing North Sea fields in March 2026, arguing it supports jobs, tax revenue, and gives supply chains time to adapt. Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy and boss of the UK’s largest energy supplier, was blunter: “Ideology, wishful thinking, nostalgia, and cultural warfare do not provide real solutions. We must make use of what is available from the North Sea.”
These are not oil executives. These are the people running the clean energy transition. When they say produce more, it is worth asking why the government is not listening.
What a sovereign fund would have meant
The estimates vary by methodology and assumption. A peer-reviewed simulation published in Energy Policy estimated the fund could have reached approximately £354 billion by 2018 had revenues been directed into it from 1975. Professor Sukhdev Johal of Queen Mary University of London put the figure higher -- around £850 billion -- had the UK followed the Norwegian model of state ownership and taxation. Economist John Hawksworth’s 2014 paper estimated a more conservative £400 billion.
The actual figure is zero. There is no fund. There never was.
The UK talks about energy security, strategic reserves, and supply chain resilience. It publishes strategies and frameworks. It commissions reviews.
Then it runs down the wells, issues no new licences, and wonders why there are queues in Douglas.
The receipts, as ever, are the point.
Primary sources: Norges Bank Investment Management annual results 2025; Norwegian Ministry of Finance white paper, 27 March 2026; HMRC Government Revenues from Oil and Gas Production, September 2025; UK Parliament POST briefing, March 2026; Energy Policy journal, peer-reviewed simulation of UK sovereign wealth fund; The Guardian, 25 March 2026.
-- Alan