TRILLION DOLLAR BABY

Life in Norway began to change after Christmas Eve 1969, which was the day when Phillips Petroleum discovered oil off the southern coast. As the revenue began flowing, Norway began having a long and serious debate about what it should do with this money. Over time its leaders began to put in place the most robust and visionary framework for extracting maximum benefit from non-renewable resources found anywhere in the world. Less than 20 years after the country began investing in what is now called the Government Pension Fund, Norway has the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world with assets of $940 billion. All of this money has been saved in just 18 years by a country with the population of just 5 million. What's more, the fund is on track to hit the US$1 trillion mark within the next 2-3 years.

Norway's savings strategy means that it has taken a non-renewable resource and turned it into a financial asset that can last forever. The current generation of Norwegians now enjoy the highest standard of living in the world, but this has been achieved by a policy that will also hand on generations to come an endowment that will maintain this high standard of living long after the oil wealth has been completely exhausted.

This is the story of how they did it.

Paul Cleary travelled to Norway in 2013 to interview political leaders, senior public servants and ordinary Norwegians about what the country has achieved. He is a senior writer at The Australian newspaper where he has specialised in covering the resources boom.