Europe has experienced unnatural earthquakes for decades, or “Dutch disease”. A bold dot is ceremoniously added to it

The Netherlands has officially stopped drilling at Europe’s largest gas field in Groningen. A symbolic ceremony was held this month “at the place” where the deposit field was discovered in 1959.

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Since then, Groningen gas has become one of the main sources of the kingdom’s wealth. However, the resource boom, when foreign currency flowed into the country, also had a downside.

All the money in the country was invested in the gas industry, other sectors of the national economy did not develop, other sectors remained underfunded, which led to deindustrialization, job losses and an increase in inflation in the second half of the 1970s.

The ‘Dutch disease’ or Groningen effect is a type of resource curse common to many hydrocarbon rich countries.

If the Netherlands has now overcome the economic consequences of this misguided strategy, the environmental problems remain.

Over the years, it has become clear that drilling is causing many earthquakes in the region, and the problem worsened in the 2010s. In 2012, Groningen was hit by a 3.6 magnitude earthquake, the strongest in the region’s history.

In total, approximately 1,600 earthquakes have been registered since 1986 – tens of thousands of buildings were damaged, and almost a hundred thousand people were injured.

In 2018, the final decision was made to gradually abandon the development of the field. Drilling effectively ceased in October 2023, although 11 wells remained open due to “difficult winter weather conditions” and the “uncertain international situation” caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

However, it is not clear whether halting drilling is enough to prevent new earthquakes, as the cavities still remain underground.

Shell and ExxonMobil, which operate the Groningen field, have gone to arbitration to decide whether the Dutch government should pay them compensation for the huge gas reserves that are now “buried” and remain untapped.

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