Norway Government Pension Fund founded
The Norwegian Parliament created what became the Government Pension Fund Global on April 22, 1990, to manage the surplus revenues from North Sea oil. Norway started with the explicit assumption that the oil would run out and that current generations should not consume the wealth. By 2024 the fund held over $1.5 trillion in assets — roughly $275,000 per Norwegian citizen — making it the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. The Norwegian model became the template for every later petroleum sovereign wealth fund (Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi PIF, Qatar, Russia's NWF), which now collectively manage roughly $5 trillion. Petrodollar revenue had to go somewhere; sovereign wealth funds were where.
Norway's fund is unusual in being run with an explicit public mandate, transparent reporting, and a 4 percent annual spending rule (later lowered to 3 percent). Most other sovereign wealth funds report less and spend more. The Norwegian model is admired but rarely replicated; it requires a level of political consensus most petrostates do not have.
04 · The Petrodollar
When Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, the dollar lost its commodity backing. It immediately gained a new, less visible one. In 1974, Saudi Arabia agreed to price all its oil exports in U.S. dollars in exchange for American security guarantees and a Saudi commitment to recycle oil revenues into U.S. Treasury bonds. Every country that wanted oil now needed dollars. Sovereign wealth funds emerged as the warehouses of recycled petroleum money. The petrodollar system was as load-bearing for the post-Bretton-Woods financial order as gold had been for the previous one — and far less visible.
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