Chancellor John Healey announced the creation of an Energy Wealth Fund during the Jackdaw gas platform approval announcement on Wednesday, diverting £2bn from the existing National Wealth Fund to launch the new initiative. The move follows decades of debate over whether the UK should have established a sovereign wealth fund using North Sea oil and gas revenues, similar to Norway's $2.4tn fund. Treasury officials calculated that if historical North Sea receipts of £200bn had been invested without withdrawals and grown at a rate comparable to Norway's, the fund would now be worth approximately £1tn. Healey stated that proceeds from current oil and gas production could be invested for future generations, noting that such a fund might have reached a trillion pounds had it been established when North Sea oil was first discovered in the 1980s. The proposal draws on Norway's model of long-term investment, though the UK plans to differ by focusing on domestic green energy investments rather than global allocations like Norway's US tech-heavy portfolio. Norway's fund, which began in 1996 with 3% of its value drawn annually to support a fifth to a quarter of government budgets, has grown from an initial 2bn Norwegian Kroner to over 2tn Kroner through compounding returns. The UK's new fund, starting with £2bn, faces a different trajectory as North Sea production declines and tax revenues diminish, though recent discoveries like Jackdaw may slow this trend. Unlike Norway, which maintains state control over its oil companies, the UK's approach lacks comparable ownership structures. The concept of a lost oil dividend has periodically surfaced in Scottish independence discussions and was proposed by government advisers in the 1970s. The fund's success will depend on investment performance and the sustainability of declining North Sea output.