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posted by mrpg on Thursday September 27 2018, @05:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the 2030? dept.

Earthquake fear ends Dutch gas boom:

The Dutch are proud of the way they have created a country by fighting back the ocean—but when they started making their own earthquakes it proved a step too far.

The tiny village of Zeerijp in the northern Netherlands looks ordinary on the surface, yet closer inspection reveals cracks in homes, schools and historic buildings.

A series of quakes caused by extractions at Europe's biggest gas field in Groningen province culminated in a 3.4-magnitude tremor in January, the biggest for six years.

[...] Facing a wave of public anger over the threat to life and limb, the Dutch government announced that all gas extraction from Groningen will end by 2030.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:07AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 27 2018, @11:07AM (#740740)

    That is not the whole story. The gas extraction will end in 2030 but it has already been significantly reduced, to levels that are supposed to be less problematic. It's hard to totally stop extraction because this gas field has a different caloric value from gas available for import, so the country has a dependency on it that can't be eliminated overnight.

    Damage causing earthquakes have been happening since 2012 but the government did not show an adequate response. They left it it to the corporation extracting the gas, NAM (owned by Shell and ExxonMobil) to assess damage claims and not surprisingly the damage experts they hired worked slowly and quite often failed to see the very obvious links to earthquakes. This resulted in large demonstrations, action groups with fancy names like Groninger Bodem Beweging (Groningen Ground Movement) and Schokkend Groningen (Shocking/Shaking Groningen) (Groningen is the name of the province where this is going on), and only after the recent 3.4 quake the government decided on a protocol for handling the damage that took NAM out of the decision process.

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  • (Score: 1) by Blymie on Friday September 28 2018, @01:58AM

    by Blymie (4020) on Friday September 28 2018, @01:58AM (#741152)

    Interesting... but I doubt their claims of "safe levels".

    For example, it's been 10000 years since the last ice age. Or more? Anyhow, we get earthquakes here in Northern Canada, on the Canadian Shield, that are *still* due to the land rebounding, the crust rising, after the weight of the glaciers is finally being removed.

    10k years later, and the mantel is still slowing returning to how it was before being crushed by all that ice.

    My point is, I don't think it's about speed. That gas is going to vanish from the shale. How can they be SURE, that the shale isn't going to violently readjust, when taken slow, instead of fast?

    It could stay static, never move, until a certain point is reached then BAM! and another small quake.

    I don't think this will fix anything, to be honest. But thanks for the info, more info = better, for sure.