Statoil and Equinor

The company's partial privatization in 2001 attuned its management more to investors than to the state. An unprecedented rise in oil prices between 2004 and 2014 and the merger with Norsk Hydro's oil and gas division in 2007 buoyed the company's rapid internationalization, transforming it from a Norwegian company into a global one. And the impending climate crisis forced the company to consider a world without oil and gas, transforming it into an energy company under a new name, Equinor. Navigating these turbulent global events, Statoil met with success and failure. Major strategic shifts into unconventional oil and gas and offshore wind proved particularly vexing, exposing a recurring tension in Statoil's governance between public expectations and capital market demands. On the one hand, Statoil's management felt the pressure from investors to become a global oil and gas company. On the other, management had