The Norwegian government has been heavily criticised for approving plans to reopen three North Sea gasfields nearly three decades after they were closed to help fill the gap in energy supplies created by the Middle East war.

Amid sharp price rises in oil and gas since the US and Israel’s attack on Iran in February, Oslo has also given its approval for oil and gas companies to explore in 70 new locations in the North Sea, Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea.

The decision by the Labour-run government goes against the advice of the country’s environment agency and has infuriated left-leaning parties.

“We live in troubled times,” the prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said as he announced the decision, which would “create great value for the community, lay the foundation for good jobs throughout the country, ensure our common welfare and contribute to Europe’s energy security and safety”.

The Albuskjell, Vest Ekofisk and Tommeliten Gamma gasfields in the North Sea were closed in 1998. The government plans to spend 19bn kroner (£1.5bn) on restarting them by the end of 2028 with production to continue until 2048.

The gas will be sent by pipeline to Germany with light oil sent to the UK.

Norway set out the plan to expand its North Sea oil and gas production amid a row in the UK over the future of hydrocarbons in UK waters. The Labour government has banned new exploration licences, but the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, is under pressure to decide on whether to allow two projects which were granted licences under the previous Conservative government to go ahead.

Norway’s state oil company, Equinor, hopes to develop the Rosebank oilfield, while Shell is waiting for a government decision on its Jackdaw gas project. Climate campaigners have said the projects would undermine the UK’s climate agenda, while some industry experts have argued that domestic fossil fuels would lead to lower emissions than US imports and would bring greater economic benefits.

The 70 new areas of Norway’s seabed to be opened up for exploration include some closer to the coast than ever before. Companies have until 1 September to apply, and licences will be granted early next year.

The deputy leader and environment spokesperson for the Socialist Left party, Lars Haltbrekken, said the decision was madness and accused the government of greenwashing.

“It shows that the government is once again blatantly ignoring environmental advice from its own experts,” he said. “All the talk about responsible oil extraction is nothing but nonsense. It’s greenwashing through and through, with vulnerable and important natural areas being put at risk with full awareness.”

Expanding the area for exploration licences would not solve today’s oil crisis and could have “potentially catastrophic consequences for fish and bird populations”, he said.

“We are now risking oil drilling right up to the shoreline. If an accident happens, we have no chance of preventing an environmental catastrophe.”

Equinor has pumped record amounts of oil and gas since the US-Israeli war with Iran and the closure of the strait of Hormuz strangled the flow of oil and gas from the Gulf to the global markets.

It pumped 2.31m barrels of oil equivalent a day in the first quarter, according to its latest financial results, almost 9% more than in the same months last year and almost double the increase financial analysts predicted.

The company’s record fossil fuel production combined with surging market prices helped it to its highest quarterly profits since 2023, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a gas supply shock across Europe. Equinor expects the current disruption to last well beyond any end to hostilities.

Norway’s energy minister, Terje Aasland, said: “Norwegian production of oil and gas is an important contribution to energy security in Europe. Development of new gasfields helps Norway maintain high deliveries in the long term.

“This has become more important after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East.”

The Norwegian prime minister’s office declined to comment.

A couple of years ago, a surprise episode of The Bear would have been one of the highlights of the year. The stressful, tightly compressed comedy-drama about a restaurant in Chicago hit television like a juggernaut when it launched. It felt like nothing else and it was all anyone could talk about.

How things have changed. Two disappointing seasons have taken all of the wind out of The Bear, so when it was announced that a special episode had dropped (before what is expected to be the final season this summer), you would have been justified to feel trepidatious.

The good news, then, is that the new episode, Gary, isn’t terrible. A two-hander about Cousin Richie and Mikey Berzatto, written by Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Jon Bernthal (the actors who play them and are co-starring on Broadway in Dog Day Afternoon), it concerns a road trip to deliver a mysterious package to an unknown customer in an unfamiliar city in the hours before Richie’s wife gives birth.

It’s not a spoiler to reveal that Gary is a flashback episode. The premise of The Bear revolves around the aftermath of Mikey’s suicide, and Richie is presently a fully reformed front-of-house expert who no longer dabbles in the sort of low-rent shenanigans that Gary concerns itself with.

Gary has a warped road-trip feel to it, even though Gary, Indiana, is so close to Chicago that you could be there and back in just over an hour. The Bear still isn’t a comedy by any stretch, but the meal made out of a trip of such scant distance is one of the funniest things it has done in years.

Part of what makes this work is the fact that, at least in the show’s early days, Richie was the living embodiment of Chicago, pushing back hard at the first sign of gentrification. Here, as soon as he leaves his home city, he becomes a fish out of water: spiky, prickly and too loud by half.

Keeping such a narrow focus allows Gary to stop itself from drifting into many annoying Bearisms. There are no showy cameos allowing actors to chew the scenery with one eye on an Emmy. It isn’t set inside a high-end restaurant, so we don’t get any breathless bootlicking à la Chef’s Table. You may be pleased to learn that there is not a single montage.

Nevertheless, some Bearisms slip through. As fun as the opening moments are, with the pair being vociferously obnoxious in a succession of Gary locales, the bottom soon drops out. Richie and Mikey wind up in a bar, where we’re treated to lots and lots (and lots) of sequences of Richie being gregarious and Mikey being soulfully depressive. Things soon pick up, but it leaves the sense that Gary is agreat 30-minute episode of television trapped inside a fitfully mediocre 60-minute one.

One scene, though, just about makes up for this. Fuelled by booze, drugs and self-loathing, Mikey makes a speech aimed at Richie that curdles as soon as it leaves his mouth. It is a miserable, angry, lacerating monologue delivered like a closing time punch-up. Moss-Bachrach’s silent pain at being on the receiving end makes it truly uncomfortable to endure.

What really sells this scene is the fact that we’ve already seen Richie evolve beyond this point is what sells the scene. We know the joy that discipline and attention to detail give him. We know that he has always been a tremendous father. We know that he makes it through and that Mikey does not. You have to weather a fair amount of self-indulgence to get there, but it’s a wonderful scene that should go down as one of The Bear’s greatest moments.

It bodes well for season five that Gary was released as a standalone episode. When The Bear is at its worst, it loses interest in the restaurant and prefers to meander through endless flashbacks and bottle episodes. Gary may be a sign that The Bear wants to clear the decks and regain its focus. The episode also appears to inch the show’s plot forward; the final scene jumps to the present day and implies that Richie will spend much of the next season injured. We’ve been burned by The Bear before, but if the show is indeed adopting its former guise, it will be all the better for it.