UK-Norway energy pact boosts jobs, gas supplies

Britain signed an energy pact with Norway on Thursday designed to boost the number of long-term gas supply deals and create up to 1,600 jobs in the UK, the energy ministry said. The deal also envisages joint exploitation of the Arctic's vast energy riches and greater collaboration in the tapping of North Sea oil and gas fields. British Prime Minister David Cameron signed the "Energy Partnership for Sustainable Growth" deal with Norwegian counterpart Jens Stoltenberg in Oslo. "This will mean more collaboration on affordable long-term gas supply, more reciprocal investment in oil, gas and renewable energies and more commercial deals creating thousands of new jobs and adding billions to our economies," Cameron said in a statement, adding that it could create 1,600 jobs in the UK. Turning to new technologies, the partnership aims to expand ties in renewable energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, an as yet unproven method of trapping exhausts from polluting power plants.