The Norwegian Mining and Quarrying Industries

Norwegian quarrying and mining industry consists of companies that excavate and process a number of mineral products from the ground. The houses we live in, the roads we drive upon, the paint on the walls, the monuments on the churchyard, the PC in the office, the shiny surface on the paper brochures, even in icecream and in toothpaste there is minerals!  

The Norwegian extraction industry has an annual turnover of approximately NOK 10 billion and according to NGU, employed more than 5000 workers in 2004.  It is a major industry in many regions with Møre og Romsdal, Rogaland, Nordland, Vestfold og Finnmark as some of the most important counties. The export value of minerals in Norway during 2004 was approximately NOK 5 billion incl. Norwegian coal mines on Svalbard.  75% of the volume in the trade is crushed stone and gravel; there are very few ore mines left, while the industry minerals are increasing in importance.  Quarrying and processing of stone for buildings, monuments, exterior projects and to an increasing degree also for interior use is also an important part of the industry.

Extractive industry is facing a series of common frame work conditions, among these the access to resources. Comments to proposals for a new Mineral Act, revisions of the Planning- and Building Act, creation of the new Finnmark Act and the new proposal for an act to protect biological species have been important actions on behalf of the sector so far. 

The report on the bottom of this page is from the Norwegian Geological Survey and the Norwegian Directorate of Mines. It sums up the industry in key figures.

The rest of our homepage is in Norwegian. We do not have the capacity to keep a large English section updated. However, we find that if you copy any text, including what  is posted at our website, and paste it into Googles translating program, you get a general idea of the meaning. The grammar will not be perfect, but the translation is surprisingly good. We enclose the link to this program, and suggest you try it. When this relatively course translation opens for several interpretations, however, we suggest you contact our secretariate for help.