Groningen, the Netherlands - Between a rock and a hard place

[Bob]

Natural gas had provided a boone to the Netherlands, specifically the Groningen area.

NAM - the Netherlands Petroleum company (https://www.nam.nl/english-information.html) was created in 1947 to extract the abundance of natural gas from under ground, almost 2 miles below the land surface.

In 1959, NAM discovered the Groningen gas field, one of the world's largest, with 2,800 billion cubic meters (98,870 billion cubic feet) of reserves.

It has been incredibly lucrative for NAM and the Dutch government.

In the 2016 financial year, NAM paid just over 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) to the Dutch government and made a net profit of 526 million euros ($654 million).

93 percent of Dutch homes rely on the gas extracted and the government has long-term contracts to sell gas to neighboring countries.

Natural gas supplies about 45% of all the energy that is used in the Netherlands.

But there is a problem. When the high pressure gas underground is extracted, the inflated ground at about 1.9 miles deep, starts to slowly collapse back down, flattening, and when it does, small earthquakes happen all the way to the surface. And that makes the local residents living on top of the earthquake prone zones unhappy. VERY unhappy.

Fact:
Gas production from the Groningen gas field causes earthquakes which affects the daily lives of communities living in the area. On August 16, 2012, an earthquake with a magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter scale occurred near Huizinge. This earthquake was felt more strongly by residents than previous seismic activity.

In California, magnitude 2.9 - 3.9 level earthquakes are frequent.

Damage data:
mag 2.5 or less Usually not felt, but can be recorded by seismograph.
mag 2.5 to 5.4 Often felt, but only causes minor damage.
hundreds of quakes below mag 3 occur in California per day. Residents hardly pay any attention.
reference - http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/magnitude.html

Dealing with buildings in earthquake zones:
Modern buildings are built to "code" which in earthquake zones means they have to withstand loading from side to side and up and down. In the mountains for instance, SNOW LOAD is one of the factors that buildings need to deal with (the weight of massive wet snow pressing on the roofs for instance). So building codes are designed to deal with local conditions.

In the Netherlands, there are some very old structures.. Structures built prior to 1960 had very different requirements than those built 2016 and later. Buildings built (read homes) in the 1950's and earlier did not take into account shifting land.

In fact, before 2000, the Netherlands did not take any earthquake engineering measures into account for the design of new buildings, or for the strengthening of existing structures.

Does that fact seem to matter to the people who now are claiming "extreme psychological stress" is now the result of their buildings/homes shaking, walls cracking, doors no longer closing properly...?

Professor Tom Postmes of Groningen University says the effects of the quakes on public health are serious.

"It revolves around stress," he said. "We discovered (that people) who have damage to their home initially are not too badly affected. But over time — and especially if they have multiple instances of damage to their home — they tend to get very upset."

He said some 10,000 people have serious health issues caused by the stress.

Hans Warink, whose 25-year-old house in the village of Loppersum has undergone repeated repairs, is one such victim. There are other houses, 17th-century thatched houses in the area, certainly not up to code.

"There is so much stress and tension," he said. "The sadness — it's no longer the cracks in the walls, it's the cracks in my soul."

Just around the corner from Warink's house is an empty lot where weakened houses have been demolished. An adjoining street is fenced off so workers can chip away the houses' outer brick wall, strengthen the interior walls and build another exterior wall due to the earthquakes.

On the legal front, an appeals court just upheld a ruling that NAM must compensate residents for the drop in the value of their homes even if the owners do not sell.

Thijs Jurgens, NAM's manager of the Groningen Earthquakes Organization, said the company believes such compensation should be paid only when a house is sold.

"The court ruled otherwise, and we are going to take a serious look at that," he said.

NAM has been compensating home sellers in the earthquake zone for housing value drops since 2013.

An earlier court ruling ordered NAM to pay compensation for "immaterial damages" such as psychological suffering but that is under appeal.

Residents believe their concerns are taking a back seat.

Shutting down natural gas production will mean a hundred billion dollar infrastructure in the Netherlands will have to be created to bring alternative energy into the country. It has been said that 98% of the country will be affected negatively, with taxes raised to unfathomable levels, vast amounts of income depleted from government coffers.. (with sales of natural gas to other countries stopped).

Screams of "its fraking" will be heard once again (fracking has nothing to do with an inflated sand deflating when the gas balloon is collapsed, and misinformation will spread fear to other people in other countries to stop any potential for natural gas development (and Russia will gloat saying "we have the gas, wanna buy some (at horribly inflated prices)..)..

The Netherlands onshore and offshore natural gas resources (read economical abundance, and efficient clean burning natural gas for homes and businesses) - to be curtailed by "forced legislation" to hamstring the country by those upset that their old structures can't withstand less than magnitude 3.9 shakes and twists without crumbling..

The question then may be, kill a country economically for convenience? or build residences/workplaces to withstand shaking that California residents experience daily?

primary reference: Mike Corder, Associated Press
reprinted: http://www.pennenergy.com/articles/p...thout-gas.html

“They call our gas extraction ’the Dutch disease,’” said Jorien de Lege of Friends of the Earth. “(Gas) gave us great wealth, because our governments ... got the revenue from all the gas and so our cities have blossomed because of the gas money. And now we’ve gotten sort of lazy, because every time that we want to change something we realize that our whole society is made out of gas.”

[Bob]

Manmade earthquakes - how do they happen - shown graphically

¤=[Post Update]=¤

The "Solution" literally is to replace the volume of gas with the equivalent volume of liquids (produced from associated operations), or from pumping back sea-water into the formation, to keep it inflated. Such is common sense, and a relatively simple engineering problem. But people only see the "problem" and not the solution..

Then it becomes an engineering design of balancing pressures. Put back the volume, the "balloon" then remains inflated..

No need to "kill a country" economically - using common engineering sense will save that economy, and reduce or maybe even stop the ground from shaking from settling..

[O Donna]

It's amazing to me that humans, that look like ants on the surface of the earth's crust, could destabilize it to such a degree. The earths crust must be much more friable then this layman was once lead to believe.

[Red Skywalker]

We (the Netherlands) could have used a lot longer gas within the country for ourselves with less risks for earthquakes IF we had taken the gas much slower out. However $$$$$$$$$, and pumped the fields empty like madman for $$$$$$$$$$$ or €€€€€€€€€€€€. We (The goverment by the NAM, part of SHELL) sold 'our' gas as much as possible to outside the country. Yep, now it's empty and, huh???, the bottom sinks in. Damage will be compensated as less as possible and delayed as long as possible.

O, by the way, the earned gas money is gone down the drain, or at least saved away in some tropical (TAX) paradise and out of the books, ok, for the most part.

This is how the feelings are now in Groningen.