Ola Borten Moe

Early and personal life

Borten Moe was born in Trondheim Municipality, Sør-Trøndelag, on 6 June 1976 to farmer Peder O. Moe (born 1948) and nurse Kari Borten (born 1950). He is the grandson of former Prime Minister Per Borten, and married to fellow MP Anna Ceselie Brustad Moe. As of June 2009 they have two children.

Political career

Borten Moe was a member of the Trondheim city council for three four-year terms from 1995 to 2007. He was elected MP of the Norwegian Parliament from Sør-Trøndelag in 2005, after serving as deputy MP from 2001 to 2005. From 2005 to 2007 Borten Moe was a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy and the Environment, and from 2007 to 2009 the chairman of the Standing Committee on Business and Industry. Borten Moe was re-elected to the Storting in the 2021 election. In July 2023, he announced that he would not seek re-election at the 2025 election.

Borten Moe was elected the Centre Party's first deputy leader on 19 March 2011. He has been re-elected at every party convention since, but announced he would be stepping down as deputy leader in July 2023. His position remained vacant until it was filled by Bjørn Arild Gram following the 2025 party convention.

Ministerial appointments

Borten Moe was appointed as Minister of Petroleum and Energy in 2011, and held the post until 2013, when Stoltenberg's Second Cabinet was defeated in that year's election.

Following the 2021 election, he was mentioned as a leading contender to become minister of defence. Former Chief of Defence Harald Sunde endorsed Borten Moe for defence minister, calling him "wise, not afraid and brave" and that he "recognised the core of cases".

Borten Moe was instead appointed minister of higher education in Støre's Cabinet.

Minister of Petroleum and Energy

Borten Moe became the minister of petroleum and energy on 4 March 2011, following Terje Riis-Johansen's resignation.

In September 2011, he chaired an international conference with his international counterparts in Beijing, China, about carbon capture.

Following concerns from a senior advisor at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate that the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy mixed their role as manager and owner of the Norwegian petroleum fortune, Borten Moe expressed that the ministry knew what its role was. He stated that "here the NPD has an extremely important role. The Directorate does a good job of ensuring that resources are extracted in the best possible way. We place great emphasis on the recommendations from the directorate". The senior advisor in question had further notified the Storting and the Auditor General of Norway. Borten Moe said that the ministry had not been sent letters from the advisor at the time, but that they would answer any questions that could come from the Auditor General.

In November 2012, Borten Moe presented a report about the Lofoten oil field in Svolvær. His report noted that the petroleum field could give up to 1,100 new jobs in both Vesterålen and Lofoten.

Borten Moe met with four students and their teacher from the second year at Stangnes Upper Secondary School, at the annual conference for Norwegian Oil and Gass in late February 2013. The administrative director of Norwegian Oil and Gass, Gro Brækken, described their meeting as "cordially".

After Statoil announced that they would move 1,000 jobs to low cost countries, Borten Moe expressed support for the move in July 2013, and said that the plans were in line with the government's wishes. However, the move caused internal harm for Labour Party and Socialist Left Party, the two other coalition partners.

In September 2013, Borten Moe presented plans to separate the Petroleum Fund's property investments into a separate larger fund. He also expressed that the fund should be administrated from Trondheim. He told the Wall Street Journal that "We want less exposure in bonds and a heavier weighting of real estate", and also stressed that we was referring to the Centre Party, and not the red-green coalition.

Minister of Higher Education

Borten Moe was appointed minister of higher education on 14 October 2021 in Støre's Cabinet.

Borten Moe stated that students would not be receiving more student requirements for higher student support. He added that the government would be focusing on offering support to students with children, as they view this group as a group they want to help further.

Opposition politicians Henrik Asheim of the Conservative Party and Sivert Bjørnstad of the Progress Party accused the government, and specifically Borten Moe, for overriding the Nord University board's decision to close down the Nesna campus, which the Centre Party had campaigned on to re-establish. Borten Moe explained in an email: "We will now consider in more detail how we can best facilitate a higher education institution at Nesna, with primary and secondary school teacher education. We will also investigate whether we can add other study and education offers there. In addition, the goal is for Nesna to become a center for decentralized and district-oriented education and research."

In November, Borten Moe announced a directive, where he ordered the Research Council of Norway to solve the issue of researchers being unable to start up their projects. This included that the council won't be given more money, and that they have to work within the budget that already is.

On 18 December, Borten Moe and health minister Ingvild Kjerkol announced the government's plan to open 500 new study places for nurses, which would happen by autumn 2022. Borten Moe said: "This is a start. We will see in the future that there will be a heavier emphasis within the disciplines we know that we as a society have great needs for". The move was notably praised by both the Conservative and Progress parties.

Borten Moe announced the government's intention to hand out 170 million NOK for schools and other educational institutions to be able to follow up on their students. He stated: "The pandemic is resilient, and this winter there was more digital teaching and fewer opportunities to meet socially. The effect of the pandemic will also not be over as soon as we reopen. Therefore, the Storting has decided to allocate 170 million NOK to follow up the students academically and socially this year. The goal is that educational institutions and organizations can quickly initiate or extend additional measures to help students".

Political views

Since the turning towards the left of the Centre Party in the 2000s, Borten Moe is regarded as being among the "centrist" wing of the party, and has been claimed to have the ambition of moving the party back towards the right. He holds many traditional Centre Party issues strongly, such as opposition to the European Union, holding that "I think that we, within the frame of the Norwegian nation state has the opportunity of building a best possible society". He also believes that too much power, funds and competence have been centralised in the area surrounding the capital, Oslo.

In October 2009, he traveled to Denmark to study the asylum policies of the country. He then said that the number of asylum seekers coming to Norway was far too high, and that Norway should learn from the policies of Denmark, and generally tighten the Norwegian asylum policy. In 2010 he said it was extremely important that Norwegians discuss which values Norwegian society should be based on in the future. He stated as the basic foundations: democracy, human rights, respect for individuals and equality between sexes, and considered it dangerous to think about these values as platitudes. He also compared radical Islam to Nazism, and regarding the granting of asylum to terrorists, he questioned if one would have given asylum to extreme-right Germans after World War II when they also risked death penalties in Germany.