Over the last decade Norway has become known not only as a good governance example for oil and gas management, but the “fairytale” country that escaped the resource curse. In this lecture, Prof. John-Andrew McNeish aims to reveal both the truth and fiction of both of these now widespread ideas. As such, he explores the foundations and development of the Norwegian oil and gas industry and its contributions to sustaining social democracy, creating wealth and aiding stability at home. It also reveals the contentious reality of both the industry´s and country´s development, the necessary influence of organized labour and civil society, and the gradual move over the last twenty years away from a politics of moderate production to a neoliberal economic model of exponential growth and extraction.