The rash of earthquakes afflicting Oklahoma is old news. The cause appears to be backwash from fracking operations being pumped into old abandoned oil and gas wells. Lubricated rocks slip, and thus earthquakes where none were before.
But now Groningen, in the Netherlands, is suffering from quakes! I am kind of embarrassed to learn about this now, since I was only recently in Groningen. (Disclosure: I am a Dutch citizen, passport and everything. Yes, I am also a U.S.A. veteran and short and olive-skinned and Spanish-speaking. ¿Tienes algún problema con eso? Daar heb ik geen moeite mee.)
For those on the wrong side of the paywall: these quakes appear to be due to the rapid depletion of the Groningen gasfield to the east of the city. A 3.6 earthquake in 2012 wrecked thousands of homes (as you might imagine, Dutch houses are not built for tremors); on January 8th of this year another 3.4 did likewise. From the Financial Times:
Gert-Jan Veldink was at home when a 3.4-magnitude earthquake struck the northern tip of the Netherlands last month. First came the tremors, then the chimney broke and floor-to-ceiling cracks appeared in the hallway. Later, an engineer confirmed his 200-year-old farmhouse was filled with carbon monoxide from a damaged gas pipe. “The quake hit our house with all its force,” says Mr Veldink, an academic from the small town of Kiel-Windeweer, near Groningen, the regional capital. “If there’s another earthquake the same as before then the roof will collapse.”
Labor Party politicians estimate the number of houses that need rebuilding at around 90,000. The fields are operated by NAM, a 50-50 joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil. NAM has paid out about 80,000 claims, although their value is unknown.
The field has been in operation since 1959, but number of quakes started rising around the turn of the century. For an amazing visualization, click here.
Since 2013, production has fallen precipitously, but the number and intensity of the quakes has remained steady. The implication is that the ground has already been weakened; the number of quakes will fall slowly even if production stops immediately. Of course, if production doesn’t stop, then the quakes will get worse ...
Why does the government let production continue? The industry is highly taxed, with the Dutch state taking 80% of revenues. But that amounts to only 0.8% of total public revenue, down from 5% in 2013. In addition, the Dutch state is highly centralized and subsoil resources are not owned by the surface title-holder, so there is not much of a local lobby pushing for more production the way there would be in most of the United States.
Which leaves three reasons to keep production going, albeit at a capped level. First, there are legitimate worries that lowering production caps would lead to big variations in monthly production, since NAM would want to sell more in the winter when prices are high. That could lead pressure to fluctuate, making earthquakes worse.
Of course, a total shutdown would solve that problem, but that brings us to the other two problems:
- The Netherlands still relies on natural gas for heat and light. Shutting Groningen, at least in the short term, means more imports from Russia. Nobody likes Russia. In fact, Dutch politicians dislike Russia so much that they see votes in lying about their knowledge of Russian “plans to expand the country’s borders and create a ‘Great Russia’ that would include Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic countries and possibly Kazakhstan.”
- Lobbying and legal issues. Even with the high government take, NAM makes a lot of money from the gas fields. They will not take it lying down.
So there you have it. Conventional gas production is causing earthquakes in the Netherlands. But even as wind power gets cheaper and more reliable, nobody can quite figure out how to shut it down.
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