It's not (mostly) to salve their consciences; it's fundamental to their avoidance of the Resource Curse/"Dutch Disease". Norway, unlike just about everywhere else "blessed" (and I use those scare-quotes intentionally) with oil and gas, anticipated the value of not getting high on one's own supply: they have some of the most heavily taxed vehicle fuel in Europe, as well as strict limits on how much oil/gas tax revenue can be spent each year with the rest going into an enormous investment fund.

Funny story is that a very important reason why Norway ended up with the oil policies it did is a Iraq-born immigrant named Farouk Al-Kasim.

He was a geologist with a Norwegian wife, moving to Norwegy since their kid had cerebral palsy. In a testament to how desperate Norway was for competence in petroleum, he could pretty much just walk in to the ministry of industry and get a job, and ended up writing the nation’s blueprint for how it would organise its fledgling oil industry. Without him things could have gone very very different, and he has been awarded Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav Knight 1st Class for his importance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farouk_Al-Kasim

https://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com...

well yeah. my point is that when you have a small population and massive reserves then you can print money - but rather like we in the UK gloat that we do not burn coal any more (we just buy stuff from China and they do that on our behalf with Aussie coal), its not really a good thing to ship oil & gas abroad where dirtier countries can burn it ... there is a massive argument in the UK right now about whether to reopen the North Sea in the wake of Trumps Iranian "victory" ... but I guess we (all) need to back the case for leaving fossil fuels in the ground

the alternative is the Jeremy Clarkson philisophy that mankind is so greedy that we will burn evey gramme of fossil fuel on planet earth and nothing can stop that (so I may as well burn some in a Ferrari F48)