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Amidst earth tremors, health risk Dutch govt. to end Shell, Exxon gas production by Oct 1
…had ignored earthquake warnings to exploit major gas find – report
Kaieteur News – On October 1, the Dutch Government is expected to end gas production at the Netherlands’ Groningen field.
The government announced on Friday June 23, that the decision was made, as it kept its promise to cease gas extraction to limit seismic risks (the hazard associated with potential earthquakes) in the region.
Reuters reported that the field, operated by a joint venture of Shell (SHEL.L) and Exxon Mobil (XOM.N), still holds massive reserves of natural gas, but production has been almost completely wound down in the past years as tremors related to drilling caused widespread damage and mental anguish for people living nearby.
Notably, production facilities will be closed permanently in 2024, the government said, but there will be an option to extract limited amounts of gas in extreme circumstances in the coming year.
“If it’s very cold and we have problems at a storage, we will be able to restart one or more facilities. But the decision is that production will be zero from October 1,” junior minister for Mining Hans Vijlbrief told reporters. Vijlbrief added he had “no doubt” that the facilities would be dismantled after October 2024, as gas imports and the energy transition would ensure there would be sufficient gas for Dutch users by then.
It was stated too that, extraction at what once was one of Europe’s largest natural gas fields, was limited to the minimum needed to keep it operational (around 3 billion cubic metres per year) in October last year, with the aim of shutting the field a year later or by 2024 at the latest.
That deadline was the result of an unusually strong earthquake in 2018, which made the government decide to rapidly end all production. A promise it kept despite mounting international pressure to deliver more gas to counter the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
But in the years before that decision both the government and the energy companies involved had gravely underestimated the risks of production for the people living in the province, a parliamentary inquiry concluded earlier this year.
In March 2023, Kaieteur News reported, that a report by a parliamentary committee in the Netherlands provides profound insight, on how far will oil companies go for mega-profits.
The report exposed that Shell and ExxonMobil were so hungry, so blinded by their love for profit, that they ignored numerous warnings that their efforts to extract gas in Groningen province in the north-eastern part of the Netherlands was directly linked to the increasing onset of earthquakes. Also alarming is the fact that the Dutch government was complicit in the actions of the oil companies. Authorities were bewildered by the tsunami of revenues and stayed silent.
Reuters said that the extraction was even increased to nearly 54 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in 2013 even though Groningen had been hit by the region’s heaviest tremor on record a year before. A gradual series of lowered caps on output was introduced only in the years after, as protests by residents and campaigners grew.
Discovered in 1959, production hit a peak of 88 bcm in 1976 and was still close to 30 bcm only six years ago. Gas from the Groningen field is estimated to have delivered 363 billion euros (US$395 billion) to the Dutch treasury since production started in the 1960s, laying the foundation for the country’s welfare state.
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