Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette Marit Visit USA - Day 4

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette Marit on the fourth day of their visit to USA. The Crown Prince and Crown Princess have started their five-day official visit to the US, during which they will be travelling to Texas and California. The focus of the first day was on the petroleum industry.

In the afternoon, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess visited ExxonMobil’s research centre in Houston. ExxonMobil is one of the world’s leading oil and gas companies and a major operator on the Norwegian continental shelf. The company also runs the Esso refinery at Slagentangen on mainland Norway.

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit were given an introduction to the company’s activities in general as well as a presentation on the company’s oil spill preparedness and activities in the Arctic.

Crown Princess Mette-Marit undertook the formal opening of the Norwegian pavilion today, 40 years after then Crown Prince Harald did the same. The Crown Princess noted that this year marked 40 years of Norwegian participation at the conference:

“Over all these years, OTC has proven to be one of the most valuable meeting points for the Norwegian oil and gas industry. We are proud to be celebrating our 40th annual participation with our largest ever national pavilion. And we are proud of the world-leading technological innovations we saw this morning when we visited some of the Norwegian booths at the exhibition.”

The Norwegian pavilion is the largest to date, with representatives of some 60 companies.