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Norway shipping heir to sell out for $500m

Shipping heiress Marianne Odfjell has announced plans to sell off her 30 percent stake in Odfjell Drilling for about $500m in cash.

Published: 30 August 2013 10:43 CEST

Norway shipping heir to sell out for $500m

Jo Kashi, one of the tankers on which the Odfjell fortune was built

The sale opens the way for Odfjell Drilling to seek a listing on the Oslo stock exchange, which is expected to value it at between $1.2bn and $1.8bn.

Odfjell, 43, was Norway's fourth richest woman in 2007 after her father Abraham Odfjell passed over his shares in the company to her and her sister.

At that time her sister Helena, 48, who received 70 percent of the shares to Marianne's 30 percent, was Norway's richest woman Both have since moved to London to join their father, who has lived in Britain since 1994 and who now spends his life largely playing golf and teaching Tai Chi.

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NGOs take Norway to European Court over Arctic oil exploration

Northern Norway. Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash.

It’s the latest turn in a legal tussle between environmental organisations Greenpeace and Young Friends of the Earth Norway on one side and the Norwegian state on the other.

The organisations are demanding the government cancel 10 oil exploration licenses in the Barents Sea awarded in 2016, arguing it was unconstitutional.

Referring to the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the organisations claim that the oil licenses violated article 112 of Norway’s constitution, guaranteeing everyone the right to a healthy environment.”

The six activists, alongside Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth Norway, hope that the European Court of Human Rights will hear their case and find that Norway’s oil expansion is in breach of human rights,” Greenpeace said in a statement.

In December, Norway’s Supreme Court rejected the claim brought by the organisations, their third successive legal defeat.

READ MORE: Norway sees oil in its future despite IEA’s warnings

While most of the judges on the court agreed that article 112 could be invoked if the state failed to meet its climate and environmental obligations– they did not think it was applicable in this case.

The court also held that the granting of oil permits was not contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, in part because they did not represent “a real and immediate risk” to life and physical integrity.

“The young activists and the environmental organisations argue that this judgment was flawed, as it discounted the significance of their environmental constitutional rights and did not take into account an accurate assessment of the consequences of climate change for the coming generations,” Greenpeace said.

On Friday, the Norwegian government unveiled a white paper on the country’s energy future, which still includes oil exploration despite a warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA recently warned that all future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The Norwegian case is an example of a global trend in which climate activists are increasingly turning to courts to pursue their agenda.

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