Bastiaan Jeroen’s farm in ’t Zandt has columns made of reinforced concrete. “During one earthquake, I saw them twisting,” he said. “If a chip comes off, it will cut you in half. That’s the fear we’re living in.”
Jeroen lives in the province of Groningen, home to a vast gas field and the subject of a parliamentary inquiry into the links between gas extraction and the hundreds of earthquakes and tremors that have traumatised residents. His farmhouse has been shattered by hundreds of cracks from the last decade’s quakes. One outer wall is propped up by several large wooden beams.
“I’m in debt – big time,” said Jeroen. “I make good money as a carpenter but I’m at my fourth or fifth chronic burnout. The doctors say they won’t go away until I stop working but if I stop working, I can’t pay the bills.”
But Jeroen is just one of many. Groningen’s inhabitants have been affected by the giant gas field for the last few decades. About 80% of houses in villages such as Overschild are being demolished and rebuilt because of earthquake damage. More than 150,000 Groningen residents have suffered earthquake damage to their properties in the last decade, and 10,000 now face stress-related health problems.
When the parliamentary inquiry began, many believed some kind of resolution was at last in sight. But although the province’s gas production had been expected to flatline in 2023, Groningen is also the EU’s largest onshore gas field, and has been increasingly regarded as a last reserve if Russian gas supplies dwindle to nought.
Germany is hungrily eyeing its low-calorific gas reserves, which may have to be extracted under EU solidarity arrangements if there is a major supply disruption. Nato officials such as Lukas Trakimavičius have led calls for Groningen to open its taps before such a crisis.
The Dutch mining minister, Hans Vijlbrief, believes safety concerns must remain paramount and is frustrated that industry thinks its interests should come before safety in Groningen.
“I don’t agree. It’s clearly a dangerous thing to do,” Vijlbrief said. But he refused to rule out increasing gas production as “a last resort”.
“If we have to shut down industries which would mean a threat to the safety or health of people, then you get a very fine balance with opening up Groningen,” he said.
Hague-watchers believe that while Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, will publicly stick to a “safety first” script in Groningen this summer, he may allow pressure to build for a plot twist in the autumn.
“I have no doubt that if the situation in Germany worsens, pressure will be mounted on the Dutch government – not only from Germany, but from inside the Netherlands – to do whatever is possible in the context of Groningen gas production,” said Hans Grünfeld, the managing director of the VEMW business lobby.
The VEMW was in “constant dialogue” with the government about the gas crisis and had “actually started to educate” it about the safety risks posed by a shutdown of industry due to gas shortages, he said.
Another senior industry source said: “They will let this go right down to the wire, say ‘now we have to shut down a particular type of industry’. And before there is even a threat of that happening I think they will increase [gas] production in Groningen, and rightfully so.”
Much will depend on the Netherlands’ liquefied natural gas capacity, gas storage levels, ability to reduce demand and the winter’s severity.
The Groningen field contains about 450bn cubic metres of gas – enough to cover Europe’s imports from Russia for three years – buried beneath a soft clay soil, which has the unfortunate quality of amplifying seismic activity.
During tremors, the earth “bounces up like pudding”, one local resident said. In Huizinge, a magnitude 3.6 quake devastated local properties in 2012 and fears of “the big one” – a tremor reaching magnitude 5 or more – are rife.
The Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), which runs the field, was founded by Shell and ExxonMobil. It historically dealt with many of the complaints, but in 2017 the Dutch government took over. “This is informally called ‘NAM at a distance’,” said a NAM spokesperson. “This was not only the wish of the Dutch government and citizens in Groningen, but also of NAM.”
The company would not comment on individual cases, some of which are handled by different agencies, but accepted that mistakes had been made. Initially, “claims handling was too slow and due to the high number of claims, attention was no longer focused on the people who needed it most,” the official said.
They said that “since 1993 NAM recognised that gas production can lead to seismicity which can cause damages to houses”. But they also pointed out that “the level of production from Groningen is set by the minister of economic affairs and climate, not by NAM as the field operator. The minister is solely accountable for the security of supply.”
Vijlbrief said Groningen residents who complained about the pace of repairs and compensation payments were “perfectly right”.
“Dealing with their damage has gone fairly well but we’re totally delayed with the reconstruction of houses,” he said.
The current waiting time to receive a first compensation offer from the authorities for damage repair is 238 working days, says Nienke Busscher, of the government-funded Groningen Knowledge Platform. The compensation scheme was “a disaster in slow motion” for locals, she said.
Nettie Klompsma, a former journalist, said she lost her compensation claim for dozens of cracks in her house’s wall and leaky double glazing when she became unable to continue the application after her husband died.
“They denied the leakage from the double glazing was due to earthquakes and at that time I was still in mourning,” she said.
Klompsma finally received a €10,000 (£8,584) goodwill payment but has a €23,000 bill for the double-glazing repairs alone. “Look at that and cry for me,” she said, holding up the chit.
“I’m a prisoner in my own house. I can’t move somewhere else because my mortgage is higher than the house’s worth. I’m alone here. I’m not very rich and I’m worried about what might happen if ‘the big one’ occurs,” she said. “I’ll have to run for my life if I’ve still got time.”
Klompsma expects the Dutch government to ramp up gas production in Groningen. “When that happens, I will ask Extinction Rebellion to help glue me to a pole because I think there will be protests,” she said.
Thousands marched in a torchlit demonstration in January and more actions are planned. As the parliamentary inquiry unravels the causes of mistakes such as an increase in gas production after the Huizinge quake – against scientific advice – anger may grow.
Dutch newspapers have reported that fossil fuel companies – particularly Shell – had a decisive backroom influence on government decisions.
Neglect was the real problem according to a former principal geoscientist for Shell, Jilles van den Beukel, who now works as an energy analyst at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.
“From 1993, a connection was established between gas production and earthquakes and all parties involved closed their eyes,” he said. “It’s a bit like climate change. You continue and continue until it really starts to become blatant and painful.”
Van den Beukel said he also regretted that Shell had been largely “silent” about global heating in the 90s. “Internally, we bloody well knew of course,” he added.
Former Shell VP Pieter Dekker told the inquiry that earthquakes in Groningen had been a “known risk” to the firm before 2012, but were considered an acceptable one.
“With this activity you can’t prevent damage 100%,” he said.
Measured against the threat of blackouts, Groningen’s exhausted quake victims fear that they will again draw the short straw when the next cost-benefit ledger is drafted.
“Once they ramp up gas production again – which they will do, because they’ll never waste a good crisis – do you think the benefits will come to Groningen this time or will they also need a golden tap in the shithole of their castle?” Jeroen asked.
“No man, they’re going to screw us over again,” he replied.
