Norway's Sotra megaproject billions over budget, SV blames Høyre's private contractor model

• The Sotra connection (Sotrasambandet) has blown past its original budget by billions of kroner
• SV (Socialist Left) blames Høyre and the right-wing model of outsourcing infrastructure to private contractors
• This is the second major Norwegian road megaproject to suffer massive cost overruns recently
• The pattern raises questions about systemic failures in Norway's infrastructure procurement model

The Sotrasambandet — a megaproject connecting Bergen to the island municipality of Øygarden (formerly Sotra) — has blown past its budget by billions of kroner, NRK reports. The cost overrun has ignited a political fight along classic left-right lines, with the Socialist Left party (SV) laying blame squarely on Høyre and the broader right-wing preference for private-sector infrastructure delivery.

SV's argument is straightforward in political terms: the right pushed for private contractors to manage the project, and the result is a budget hemorrhage that Norwegian taxpayers and toll-paying drivers will cover. Høyre, which championed the procurement model, now finds itself defending a system that has visibly failed to control costs on one of western Norway's most important transport links. The project — a combination of bridges, tunnels, and road upgrades meant to replace an ageing connection across the Sotra strait — was supposed to demonstrate that private-sector project management could deliver complex infrastructure efficiently.

This is not an isolated case. Norway has now seen at least two major road megaprojects suffer multi-billion-kroner overruns in quick succession. The earlier blowout — a five-billion-kroner budget breach on another major road scheme — already raised alarms about how Norway procures and manages large infrastructure. Taken together, the pattern points to something deeper than bad luck or difficult geology. Norway's model for contracting major road projects appears to systematically underestimate costs at the approval stage, then leave the public sector exposed when private contractors hit problems. The contractors negotiate from a position of strength once construction is underway — stopping a half-built bridge is not a realistic option — and the state ends up absorbing overruns that were supposed to be the private sector's risk.

The political debate, as framed by SV and Høyre, reduces this to a question of public versus private. But the deeper issue is how risk is allocated. If private contractors bid low to win contracts and then pass cost increases back to the state, the supposed efficiency gains of privatisation vanish. The state gets the worst of both arrangements: it pays private-sector margins on top of public-sector risk exposure. Whether a state-run construction agency would have done better is an open question — Norway's public sector is not famous for frugality either — but the current model has produced two spectacular failures in rapid succession.

Norwegian drivers crossing the new Sotra connection will pay tolls for decades to finance a project whose final cost nobody can yet state with confidence. The contractors, at least, will be paid.

Sources: NRK