NL TIMES

Shell: Gas field in Groningen must be completely closed this year, in light of earthquakes

SUNDAY, 26 MARCH 2023 

The gas field in Groningen must be completely closed this year, said the CEO of Shell Netherlands, Marjan van Loon. Currently, the gas field is still supplying minimal amounts of gas to keep the wells usable, but she doesn’t think that’s necessary. “It can and must be done, so the field has to be closed,” Van Loon said on the TV program WNL Op Zondag. read more

DutchNews.nl

Damning report slams state, oil companies for Groningen gas failures

February 24, 2023 – By Robin Pascoe

The interests of the people of Groningen were systematically ignored by both the government and oil companies, and making money remained the dominant concern when natural gas extraction started causing earthquakes, according to the parliamentary commission set up to investigate.

The worlds of those making the decisions and the locals were ‘miles apart’, commission chief Tom van der Lee said at the presentation of the report into the problems, which has taken two years and hundreds of interviews to complete.

Gas extraction has become an ‘unprecedented system failure’ and both the public and private sector have failed in their duties, Van der Lee said.

Ministers were not properly informed and that meant that MPs could not fulfill their role as guardians of the public interest. The damage, both material and mental, suffered by locals was consistently underestimated and the maximalisation of profit was the guiding force. read more

“Gas extraction in Groningen was so successful and lucrative for the Dutch government, Shell and Exxon Mobil that they hardly took any notion of the long-term risks and the ever-clearer signs of the detrimental effects for the people in Groningen…” 

REUTERS

Dutch gov’t, Shell and Exxon ignored Groningen risks for years, inquiry finds

AMSTERDAM, Feb 24 (Reuters) – The Dutch government and energy companies Shell (SHEL.L) and Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) ignored the risks of gas production in Groningen for years, to the detriment of people living in the province, a parliamentary inquiry concluded on Friday.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte and others involved “gravely underestimated” the urgency of the problems in Groningen, said the committee set up to investigate the decades of lucrative gas extraction that caused tremors damaging thousands of houses and buildings in the region.

The massive Groningen field is operated by Shell and Exxon joint venture NAM and was one of Europe’s major suppliers of natural gas for decades.

“These are hard and painful conclusions,” Rutte told a news conference. “They make clear there is a lot to do to help the region and to hopefully restore trust.”

The government will take time provide a full response to the report, he said without indicating how long that would take.

A statement from NAM director Johan Atema said: “It is clear that we need to have a better eye for the society in which we work. It is up to us to show that we as a company have learned from this.” read more

OILPRICE.COM

Netherlands To Shut Down Europe’s Largest Gas Field

By Irina Slav – Jan 23, 2023, 7:30 AM CST

The Dutch government plans to close the Groningen gas field this year despite Europe’s precarious supply position. Groningen is the largest gas field in Europe.

The field is dangerous, a government official from the Hague told the Financial Times, and the government has no plans to boost production from it.

“We won’t open up more because of the safety issues,” Hans Vijbrief told the FT. “It is politically totally unviable. But apart from that, I’m not going to do it because it means that you increase the chances of earthquakes, which I don’t want to be responsible for.” read more

Climate activists across world raise funds for the court case against Shell

Friends of the Earth Netherlands: 20/01/2023 | 16:25 PM

In 2021, thousands of Dutch citizens took one of the largest carbon emitters in the world to court and won. Together with Friends of the Earth Netherlands (Milieudefensie) they won a historic court case against Royal Dutch Shell, the parent company of Shell Group, forcing the company to take climate action.

The judge ruled that Shell’s current climate policy would contribute to a level of climate change that would be so dangerous that it would impose a threat to human rights. read more

Large-scale polluter Shell loses legal battle

The Guardian: Isabella Kaminski: Thu 29 Dec 2022 12.00 GMT

Between 2004 and 2007, the villages of Oruma, Goi and Ikot Ada Udo in Nigeria were polluted with oil from infrastructure built by Royal Dutch Shell. More than 15 years later, in late December, the company finally agreed to pay four farmers and their communities €15m in compensation and install a leak detection system after a court in the Netherlands ruled that Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary was liable and the parent company had a duty of care. read more

REUTERS

Shell to pay 15 mln euros in settlement over Nigerian oil spills

December 23, 20229:31 AM GM

AMSTERDAM, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Shell (SHEL.L) will pay 15 million euros ($15.9 million) to communities in Nigeria that were affected by multiple oil pipeline leaks in the Niger Delta, the oil company on Friday said in a joint statement with the Dutch division of Friends of the Earth.

The compensation is the result of a Dutch court case brought by Friends of the Earth, in which Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary last year was found to be responsible for the oil spills and was ordered to pay for damages to farmers. read more

REUTERS

Nigerian widows end their case in the Netherlands against Shell

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – A group of four widows who had sought to hold Shell liable for damages in the Netherlands after their anti-oil activist husbands were executed by the Nigerian government in 1995 have cancelled further legal proceedings, their lawyer said on Monday.

“Obviously this is not without disappointment and frustration,” said lawyer Channa Samkalden in statement announcing that the widows have cancelled an appeal launched after the Hague District Court rejected their case earlier this year. read more

REUTERS

Shell should have quit Groningen gas project in Netherlands earlier -CEO

AMSTERDAM, Oct 13 (Reuters) – Shell CEO Ben van Beurden told a Dutch parliamentary panel investigating problems relating to natural gas production at the large Groningen gas field in the Netherlands that the company should have pulled out of the project earlier.

Production at Groningen was scaled back sharply over a period of years in the 2010s after the Dutch government and producer NAM, a Shell-Exxon joint venture, realized the earthquakes it caused posed too great a threat to life and property.

“We had to continually ask what makes sense,” as production was dialled back to levels at which NAM made little to no profit, Van Beurden told lawmakers.

“What made sense for Shell was to quit. In any other country we would have stopped this operation. But in the Netherlands that was impossible because the Netherlands was dependent on Groningen gas.”

A damning report in 2015 from the independent Dutch Safety Board had accused the government and the field’s operators of ignoring the threat of earthquakes linked to the field for years. As vast amounts of gas were removed from under the province since 1963, the ground sank and settled above empty pockets, triggering quakes. read more

Dutch state earned €363.7 billion through Groningen gas extraction

TUESDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 2022 – 08:44

After almost 60 years of gas extraction in Groningen, the involved parties finally announced how much money they made from it. Adjusted for inflation, the Groningen gas field yielded a total profit of 428 billion euros, of which the Dutch state received 363.7 billion euros, Het Financieele Dagblad reports based on calculations from shareholder Shell.

The remaining 64.7 billion euros in profit went to the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), the operator of the Groningen gas field. NAM paid the amount out as dividends to its shareholders – Shell and ExxonMobil.

Shell released the figures for the ongoing parliamentary inquiry into gas extraction in Groningen. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate confirmed the profit division to FD.

The figures show that the government received 85 percent of the profit from the Groningen field – quite a bit higher than the about 70% income paid for other concessions. Aad Correlje, associate professor and energy expert at the Delft University of Technology, called that remarkable. “We knew that the government took a large part of the profit, but not that the difference with the gas companies’ profit was that big,” he said to the newspaper. read more

NL TIMES

Tens of thousands to get compensation for Groningen earthquakes

TUESDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 2022

Tens of thousands of Groningen residents are still eligible for compensation for earthquake damage. This is reported by the Groningen Institute for Mining Damage (IMG), which will offer a one-time fixed payment of 5,000 euros as compensation to people who, in the past, received little or no restitution. In total, the institute estimates that it will cost an additional 100 million euros more than the hundreds of millions already spent on compensation for physical damage. read more

DutchNews.nl

Groningen gas: former mining director says gas firms taken more seriously than supervisor

Sept 1, 2022

The economic affairs minister took gas companies more seriously than government safety supervisors, according to evidence at the six-week enquiry into what has gone wrong in Groningen.

This week the enquiry restarted into how decades of gas extraction caused ever more earthquakes and damage for local people, and why compensation schemes have failed so badly. It will run until October 14. read more

The Guardian

Fears of new quakes in Dutch gas field as energy crisis bites

Arthur Neslen: Mon 22 Aug 2022 10.00 BST

The province of Groningen is 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.

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. read more

The NewYork Times

Shell reports record profit, again, with $11.5 billion in latest quarter.

The energy giant is thriving because of soaring oil and gas prices and a tight market for refined products.

Shell reported record earnings for the second consecutive quarter on Thursday, as the energy giant continues to prosper from high oil and gas prices spurred by the war in Ukraine and other factors.

Shell, Europe’s largest energy company, said adjusted earnings were $11.5 billion for the second quarter. The figure topped Shell’s previous record of $9.1 billion in the first quarter. read more

SHELL COMMENTS ON THE VERDICT FROM THE MILAN TRIBUNAL OVER OPL-245

Mar 17, 2021

Ben van Beurden, Chief Executive of Royal Dutch Shell plc (“RDS” or the “Company”), today made the following statement after the Milan Tribunal acquitted the company of charges related to Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL) 245 in Nigeria:

“We welcome today’s decision by the Milan Tribunal. We have always maintained that the 2011 settlement was legal, designed to resolve a decade-long legal dispute and unlock development of the OPL 245 block. At the same time, this has been a difficult learning experience for us. Shell is a company that operates with integrity and we work hard every day to ensure our actions not only follow the letter and spirit of the law, but also live up to society’s wider expectations of us.” read more

Shell comments on dismissal of Dutch investigation into OPL 245

Jul 21, 2022

Shell plc (“Shell”) today made the following statement after the Dutch Public Prosecutor’s office announced it had dismissed its investigation into bribery allegations related to Oil Prospecting Licence (OPL) 245 in Nigeria.

“We welcome today’s decision, which marks an end to the criminal investigation in The Netherlands. It follows the Milan Public Prosecutor’s appeal withdrawal earlier this week, which ended all criminal proceedings and confirmed the Milan Tribunal’s decision to acquit Shell and four of our former employees in March 2021. read more