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% [?]

“Report is Public”, blares the front page of The Star today:

KUALA LUMPUR: Petronas has been publishing its annual report for the past 18 years and it is easily available, including on its website, said its president and chief executive officer Tan Sri Mohd Hassan Marican.

“We print 5,000 copies of the report every year even though we are legally required to publish only two. We distribute the report to the Parliament library, ministries and even the media,” he said in an interview.

Replying to queries by various quarters that the national petroleum corporation’s accounts were not made public, Hassan said yesterday that this was not true and it was just that certain people “refused to look for iteven though it is easily available.”

”If they cannot find one of the 5,000 copies we’ve printed, then they should have searched our website under the heading ‘Investors Relations’ in the Corporate webpage.

Seriously. God. Who do you think you are kidding? Everyone knows that Petronas’ revenue is public. That’s how we know that the oil prices are giving you record profits!

What we fricking obviously want to know is HOW THE GOVT SPENDS the money that is taken from Petronas. It sure as hell isn’t in the annual report, or anywhere else. (BTW you can get the report here, Petronas’ site is a bitch to navigate). You would think that journalists and editors over at the People’s Paper would have thought of this, but no.

Popularity: 57% [?]

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% [?]