Context: The European Commission opposes resuming Russian gas supplies through Nord Stream, even after the war in Ukraine ends. The European Commission’s chief spokesperson, Paula Pinho, made this statement. She said Europe has already experienced the dangers of relying on Russian energy, which Moscow has used to exert pressure. Brussels does not want a repeat of this situation.
On October 28, 2026, a recording of the program Ekspertnyi Klub: Politicheskoe Radio Show, broadcast by the First National Channel of Belarusian Radio, was uploaded to YouTube. Oleg Kukhalski, the former chargé d'affaires ad interim of Belarus in Iran and a show participant, linked the fluctuation in the value of the Norwegian investment fund to tensions in European energy markets.
“The world’s largest investor is the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. ... Now, this fund has recently begun to lose market capitalization at a sharp rate. We’re talking about tens of millions of dollars lost in a single week. This indicates that something unfavorable for European consumers is happening in the European Union’s energy market — and in Norway, which, while not technically part of the EU, is closely tied to it in terms of energy resources.
If such powerful entities are becoming unprofitable, this happens because the stocks they’re betting on aren’t performing as expected. In other words, there isn’t exactly panic, but there is tension in the European energy markets.”
The fund in question is Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund. The fund receives the country’s oil and gas production revenues. Its portfolio includes stocks, bonds, real estate, and other assets around the world. Its mission is to grow these assets and ensure the future stability of the Norwegian economy once its oil reserves have been depleted.
The third-quarter 2026 report did record a decline in the fund’s value of 670 billion kroner. However, most of this change — 472 billion kroner — was due to the strengthening of the Norwegian krone. Foreign assets were worth less when converted into kroner.
The fund’s value change due to exchange rates and the results of its investments are two different metrics. The investment loss for the quarter totaled 278 billion kroner. The return on bond investments was negative, at minus 3.5%. Although the return on stocks was generally close to zero, the results varied significantly across sectors.
The energy sector posted the strongest growth among the sectors represented in the fund’s equity portfolio. Investments in these companies generated positive returns rather than losses. The report’s findings contradict Kukhalski’s explanation, in which he cited the fund’s losses as evidence of problems in the European energy market. Additionally, a negative result in one quarter does not mean that the fund was unprofitable over the first nine months of 2026. In the first half of 2026, fund's investment return amounted to 1.753 trillion kroner. After deducting the third-quarter loss of 278 billion kroner, the result for the first nine months of the year remained positive at approximately 1.475 trillion kroner (nearly €140 billion).
