With oil dropping below $30 a barrel, producers in Western Europe’s biggest crude exporting nation are now considerably worse off than they were in the darkest hours of 2008.

Norway’s oil “industry is in a crisis now, we can’t deny that,” Bente Nyland, director general of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, told Bloomberg.

The krone lost 0.8 percent against the euro as of 9:58 a.m. in Oslo, with crude oil down about 2.8 percent.

Nyland says there is a tendency for oil companies to prioritize short-term earnings rather than “long-term value creation,” as prices continue to fall.

/By AzerTac/