Norwegian Petroleum Museum — Attraction in Stavanger

Pure industry propaganda. It's absolutely maddening how huge topics like climate change, pollution, dangerous working conditions and biodiversity loss are spoken of, but in all the wrong ways. A few examples: High-profile accidents take up a major space, but long-term health problems which killed so many more oil workers are barely mentioned and never quantified The damage of accidents is always talked about in terms of worker deaths and loss of revenue. The environmental damage of massive oil spills is a non-topic Addressing climate change is always presented as a dilemma between doing good and economic interests, which it absolutely isn't. Numbers are systematically cherry-picked and often plain wrong. The number of people employed by the oil industry is inflated tenfold by including shipbuilders and other professionals who could switch to producing offshore wind turbines and electric boats within a year. Per-capita emissions of countries are always domestic, which is ridiculous for a country that exports so much oil and gas and imports so many of its goods. Projections for energy demand and production are taken directly from Shell and other oil companies. The prominent chart for worldwide energy consumption, taking up half a room on its own, stops using real numbers right before the massive expansion of solar and wind and the decline of coal. Its projections are way off-base. And there is no mention of the higher efficiency of electromotors. Yeah, sure, these bars for oil and coal are huge if you present them without context, but we need less than half as much renewable energy to fully replace them. Wherever questions are asked, they are the wrong questions. "The UN has defined 17 sustainable development goals. Which three of them do you find most important?" As if we had to choose between them.

I could list so many more patterns. The whole thing is designed to not talk about the real issues and to make climate action look like an unattractive option. It's got a high production value and is subtle enough to fool everyone who isn't deep into the matter. And seeing the other reviews for this place, it works...

You pay a premium to enter the museum but it's very well put together and has clearly had a lot of money and effort put into it. It does have a few interactive things for kids and a play area but overall I would say most of the content is very boring for children. This isn't the fault of the museum as they have done very well to make it intersting for them, it's just the actual content is more appealing to adults. I'd especially recommend this museum if you know little about Norway's wealth as it really opened my eyes. My mum and I spent quite a while reading all of the exhibits (which I would normally bypass). They do also have concession prices for students and seniors which my mum took advantage of. One thing which was either not made clear by the ticket office (or perhaps we didn't pick up) was that you get a big discount on the other museums in the area (I think there are maybe about 4 or 5 within walking distance if you are fit and active), as a result we ended up paying full price for a ticket to another museum before realising we could have had it half price. The other museums are all affiliated though so one ticket gets you into all of them of I...

The Norwegian Petroleum Museum in Stavanger is a solid base of knowledge for anyone interested in the oil and gas industry. It offers a strong historical overview and valuable insights into the development of the Norwegian offshore sector.

However, there’s still room for improvement when it comes to making the content more accessible to those without a technical background. Some of the exhibits could benefit from clearer explanations or interactive displays to better engage casual visitors.

The museum’s database and exhibits would also greatly benefit from an update to include more developments from the last decade. There’s little to no mention of recent innovations or challenges in the industry, and important areas such as ultra-deepwater (UDW) drilling are noticeably missing.

Another gap is the lack of engaging and clear content on the origin and formation of petroleum, which is a fundamental aspect that could help visitors understand the resource more fully.

All in all, it’s an informative place, but with some modernisation and better accessibility for non-experts, it could become a truly outstanding...