Crown Prince Haakon has opened an energy conference in Stavanger and addressed the industry leaders in the hall in his opening speech.
A number of the world’s leading producers of energy participated at the Offshore Northern Seas conference. They were joined by a large number of politicians as well as business leaders. Among them were Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas G. Støre and the world’s richest man Elon Musk while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy participated via video.
In his speech Crown Prince Haakon said: “When my father, King Harald, attended the first conference here in 1974 as Crown Prince, the future looked bright. The Kingdom of Norway had recently found the underwater treasure of oil that was supposed to bring us so much prosperity.….now, 50 years later, the situation is more pessimistic. But I choose to be cautiously optimistic. Not because I should be, but because there is a good reason for it. There is a lot of promising technology that will be presented here in the next few days.”
His Royal Highness continued: “We all depend on you here in the room today to make the necessary changes. It is not possible to reach the climate goals without commitment, innovation and investment. This is the right time and place. We need the best minds with the best ideas and brave decision-makers to bring the planet back into balance. The generations before us did not have the knowledge, technology and opportunities that we have. We now know what is at stake.»
After the opening ceremony, Crown Prince Haakon was given a tour of the ONS exhibition. There he had the opportunity to meet and talk to several of the actors who have a stand during the event.
The ONS conference, Offshore Northern Seas, is an international conference held in Stavanger every second year. This year, the fair is expecting more than 60,000 participants from more than 100 nations, and has developed into one of the world’s largest meeting places for the international energy industry.
