Norway and Russia have cooperated in the management of the most important fish stocks in the Barents Sea since the mid-1970s. The cooperation expanded from a narrow negotiation over total quotas to include extensive interaction between Russian and Norwegian fisheries’ scientists, management authorities and control agencies. The dissolution of the Soviet fisheries management system led to overfishing in the 1970s, but cooperation on enforcement and port state control solved the problem. The Barents Sea fisheries are today regarded as one of the best managed ocean areas globally. There have been many attempts at cooperation in the offshore petroleum sector, but it was only with the establishment of cooperation for development of the Shtokman field, one of the largest offshore gas fields in the world, that the vision of comprehensive petroleum cooperation seemed realistic. There is little reason to say, though, that Russian foreign policy considerations played any significant role when Statoil was included in the cooperation. After Shtokman was cancelled – mainly because of developments in the gas market - new cooperation projects between Rosneft and Norway were established, but they were less extensive than expected by many in Norway.