ANP
News from the NOS•yesterday, 23:17
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Reinalda Start
research editor
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Reinalda Start
research editor
King’s commissioner René Paas, as the sixtieth witness before the parliamentary commission of inquiry for the extraction of natural gas in Groningen, today expressed a severe judgment on the role of the national government. “Groningen has been mistreated by the Dutch state,” he said. This after an interrogation of over two hours, in which he explained how difficult the relationship between the administrators of the north and The Hague is.
Paas described his relationship with the former economy minister as “not intimate”. He fared better with Kamp Wiebes’ successor, but Paas’s frustration with begging for money and recognition for the province exploded. “We are the province that has enriched the Netherlands. Groningen has the right to the continued involvement of the government and parliament.” He was referring to the more than 400 billion euros earned from Groningen’s soil gas.
The image tilts
It is striking that Paas points his arrows at the state and much less against the oil companies that have also made a lot of money from the extraction of the gas. In the past, the anger has mostly focused on Shell and Exxon. It was their subsidiary, NAM, that gave the gas. In the early 1990s, it was recognized that earthquakes were the result of this.
The fact that the anger now focuses more on The Hague could be because the interrogations reveal a lot about the involvement of the Ministry of Economy in the management of the Groningen camp. Civil servants have worked closely with multinationals for many years and have not always had Groninger’s interests in mind.
It wasn’t just the Ministry of Economy that prioritized commercial interests. For example, Sandor Gaastra, the department’s director-general of climate and energy, previously said that Minister Wiebes also needed financial arguments in 2018 to turn off the gas tap in Groningen. Groningers’ safety was not the decisive argument for getting permission from the rest of the cabinet.
Shocking
During the interrogations yesterday of Shell Netherlands CEO Marjan van Loon and today of Exxon Netherlands Production Manager Rolf de Jong, it emerged that after 2017 the oil companies have left control to the state.
All of this had to do with an impending criminal case to endanger people from Groningen through the extraction of gas. In early 2017, the Arnhem court asked for a criminal investigation into the NAM in relation to the consequences of the earthquakes for the people of Groningen.
“That statement was shocking,” De Jong said today. De Jong and also Van Loon told the committee that a camp in other parts of the world will be closed if the situation is not safe. But due to the Netherlands’ reliance on Groningen gas, they saw that this was not an option. After that ruling, the oil companies would have wanted to continue extracting gas only if the state had forced them to do so.
Powerful message
Before the Arnhem court ruling, the oil companies, together with the Ministry of Economy, took decisions on the extraction of gas in Groningen. Since the start of gas extraction, the joint task in this public-private partnership has been to earn as much money as possible from Groningen gas.
In view of the criminal investigation and their legal responsibility, the oil companies have sent their top executives to Prime Minister Rutte. Eventually it led to a framework agreement in which the phasing out of gas production was regulated, but also the responsibility of Shell and Exxon.
To date, oil companies and the state are in conflict with each other over the cessation of gas extraction. Two arbitration proceedings are currently pending. And even the oil companies are not happy to keep the Groningen field running. They want clarity on the cessation of gas extraction.
On Monday, Wiebes and Wopke Hoekstra will have their say. The latter was finance minister when it was decided to stop gas drilling.
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