European trading in carbon-dioxide emissions credits will form a “cornerstone” for a future global trade in carbon by helping establish market mechanisms, the leader of Norway’s biggest energy company has said, before adding it wouldn’t happen overnight.

“We don’t foresee that a system for global emission trading will be established anytime soon,” StatoilHydro chief executive Helge Lund was quoted as saying in this month’s Scandinavian Oil-Gas Magazine.

Asked what the oil company’s view was of the young market for carbon and its promise, Lund said European trading had provided “a lot of experience” for regulators and players, but that it was still developing under “an extensive review process”.

He was guardedly optimistic in describing how global carbon trading might unfold once cap-and-trade policy had been perfected on the world’s continents.

“Together with instruments to link these schemes together, emission-trading may move towards a more globalised system with converging price levels,” Lund said, adding, “This would be a development we would welcome."

All eyes are on another round of negotiations in Copenhagen this September and beyond into the northern autumn.

Environmentalists and policy-makers are divided on whether to eventually allow the oil companies’ carbon-storage projects into the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism, where projects that keep carbon out of the atmosphere are awarded pollution credits.

Just one oil company project could keep a million tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere every year, for which handsome payment could be extracted.

ws@scandoil.com