International Courant
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Lieutenant Colonel and Head Instructor of the Norwegian Protection Academy Employees Faculty Geir Hågen Karlsen has been following the controversy over Equinor’s controversial China contracts.
The safety arguments have taken middle stage as critics have strongly warned towards the deal. The background is that Equinor has signed main contracts with Cosl, a Chinese language state-owned firm, for the rental of floating platforms.
The Storting has unanimously agreed to ask the federal government to supply all data regarding the protection assessments made when Equinor entered into the settlement with the Chinese language firm.
– Everybody agrees on the safety challenges, the specter of industrial espionage, intelligence and challenges to essential infrastructure. That is about how we sensibly stability the safety of enterprise pursuits towards safety threats and over-dependency, says Geir Hågen Karlsen.
He nonetheless believes there are extra issues to have in mind than simply security.
The article continues under the commercialRefers to precept pages
– It is necessary that we make a mature evaluation of every particular person case, what to restrict and the place to permit. It mustn’t turn out to be a state of affairs during which every thing with China turns into harmful. There are a number of arguments for this, says the lieutenant colonel, who often commented within the nationwide media on the safety state of affairs within the aftermath of the Ukraine struggle.
Karlsen believes that Norway ought to rigorously take into account 4 points relating to Equinor’s China offers. The primary is the precept aspect.
Not happy with China’s response: – Trigger for concern– We should always not unnecessarily limit enterprise. The second is financial: if we limit China an excessive amount of, it’ll turn out to be very costly. The third argument is that in the event you limit an excessive amount of, China will react – and that may make it much more costly and politically troublesome. The fourth argument is that if we solely take into consideration safety, we are going to turn out to be a totally totally different society than we would like, says Karlsen.
The companies weren’t concerned
DN wrote on Monday that safety and intelligence companies, which have been warning for a number of years about China as one of many greatest threats to Norway, didn’t turn out to be concerned within the case when Equinor was to conclude the contracts with Cosl.
– Openness has lengthy served Norway extraordinarily nicely, each economically and in all different areas. What entry to data do they get throughout exploratory drilling? Will they’ve entry to essential infrastructure and the way can China doubtlessly exploit this in a tense state of affairs? Are there different rigs if there have been a sanctions state of affairs? Good judgments must be made round all of this earlier than we are saying no. However whether it is unsafe when it comes to security, we are saying no, says Hågen Karlsen.
An unnamed official from the Embassy of the Individuals’s Republic of China in Oslo writes to DN that they’ve seen discussions surrounding “the cooperation between two firms from China and Norway.” (Photograph: Håkon Mosvold Larsen)The Chinese language embassy responds
DN has additionally requested the Embassy of the Individuals’s Republic of China in Norway for touch upon the safety discussions surrounding Equinor’s agreements with Cosl.
The embassy wrote in an e mail that it had seen discussions surrounding “the cooperation between two firms from China and Norway”.
– This contains statements from the Norwegian aspect indicating that related contracts are in strict compliance with legal guidelines and rules, had been concluded by truthful and clear processes and had been signed after strict safety assessments, the Embassy of the Individuals’s Republic of China wrote to DN.
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– It is usually value noting that plenty of European and American firms, together with these from Norway, have been taking part in oil and fuel exploration and growth initiatives in Chinese language waters for many years. As a extremely internationalized sector, cooperation between international locations on this space runs easily, writes the Chinese language embassy.
It has a transparent attraction to Norwegian determination makers.
– We hope that sure individuals from the Norwegian aspect can strategy the enterprise cooperation between our two international locations objectively and rationally. We look ahead to Norway persevering with to supply a good and non-discriminatory enterprise atmosphere to firms from varied international locations, together with China.(Circumstances)Copyright Dagens Næringsliv AS and/or our suppliers. We want you to share our instances through hyperlinks that lead on to our pages. Copying or different use of all or a part of the contents could solely be made with written permission or as permitted by legislation. For additional circumstances see right here.
Lieutenant Colonel: – Mustn’t turn out to be a state of affairs the place every thing with China turns into harmful
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