“Going forward, our position on the moratorium will remain unchanged: our guidelines aim to address climate change and environmental degradation, and to support sustainable economic development,” an EU spokesperson wrote to Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.
The same message was also given to the AFP news agency.
The ban will be confirmed in the new Arctic Strategy that the European Commission will present in October.
“Norway decides over Norwegian resources, not the EU,” Norway’s Minister of Energy Terje Aasland wrote in a comment to the news agency NTB.
Norway is the EU's largest supplier of fossil gas and one of the largest suppliers of oil, alongside the USA and Kazakhstan.
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