The 10 Oil Commandments railroad guru Rolf Hellem wrote back in the 1970s have become an important foundation for Norwegian oil policy.
The same year that humans landed on the moon, taking their first steps out into the stars, what was then the world's largest offshore oil field was discovered in Norway’s subsurface universe on the continental shelf. The discovery of Ekofisk posed vast opportunities for little Norway.
For many years, a railway man stood at the train station in Narvik, watching the comings and goings of ore trains from Kiruna in Sweden. Rolf Hellem was a station inspector and politically active. In 1965, the same year the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) was opened for oil exploration, Hellem was elected to the Norwegian parliament (Storting). He soon developed an interest in petroleum policy, and was the parliamentary spokesman for the process to establish the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate and Statoil on 14 June 1972. After the discovery of Ekofisk, he wrote the ten oil commandments. Hellem's commandments were adopted by the Storting, and became an important foundation for the petroleum policy Norway would implement. Perhaps not so surprising that Rolf Hellem came to be called the Moses of petroleum policy.
