This week’s TIME had a piece on Norway’s Government Pension Fund-Global, Norway’s sovereign trust fund. Profits from their oil and gas resources are channeled into it and invested.

Highlights:
- Assets of USD 382 billion.
- Owns 1% of the entire European stock market
- Scored 100% in governance, accountability, and transparency in a study by the Peterson Institute. Singapore’s Investment Corp averaged 40% (Petronas ranked dead last in a 2006 Spanish study of oil companies)
- Pledges to press firms it invests in to improve protection of human rights.
- Dumped stakes in Boeing and British BAE because they manufactured nuclear weapons.
- Voted in a shareholder push for Exxon-Mobil to adopt emission-reduction goals.

Norway has never sent a man to the moon, they never had the tallest building in the world, and they don’t have a national car, but certainly Norge kan!

Popularity: 41% [?]

Finally.

State oil company Petronas will finally open its books to the public after a decision to hike fuel prices by more than 40 percent set off days of protests.

It came with a major opposition party still calling for as many as 100,000 people to take to the streets at a rally early next month amid growing anger over the cost of fuel in Malaysia, which is heavily state subsidised.

Nor Mohammed Yakcop, the country’s second finance minister, told the New Straits Times newspaper that Petronas could open its ledgers to the public as soon as next week as the government looks at cutting the fuel subsidy.

“As a government that is entrusted by the people, we have to make sure our revenues are spent prudently,” he said.

The government has forecast that unless subsidies are restructured, it will spend around RM10 billion in the second half of 2008 in the face of a global surge in oil prices.

Popularity: 41% [?]