This factory should make Groningen gas forget (but that will take a while)

The scaffolding is still fourteen stories high against the three colossal cooling towers. ‘They should be gone in two or three weeks’, says Erwin Mollink decisively. As project director at Gasunie, he is ultimately responsible for the construction of the nitrogen installation at Zuidbroek. A welding smell comes from the hall where one of the large compressors is placed. What was pasture four years ago is now the domain of cranes, concrete slabs and cable reels.

There is plenty of work going on, by about five hundred construction workers and installers from all over the world. The banisters in the transformer hall are covered with strings of lights, so that work can also continue in the evenings. ‘We are just not working with 24-hour schedules yet, but it’s not much of a difference,’ says Mollink. Still, he talks a lot. Because the job will not be completed before April 1, as planned. And that has major consequences for Groningen. “We’ve been in the news quite a bit, you might say.”

For the people of Groningen, but certainly also for the government, the installation cannot be put into operation soon enough. The nitrogen plant is the government’s trump card to stop gas extraction in Groningen as soon as possible. When the cabinet announced in 2018 that it would shut off the gas tap for good, it was decided to start construction. Cost: 500 million euros.

Groningen quality

Once in operation, 10 billion cubic meters of imported gas per year, for example from Russia and Norway, can be converted into gas of Groningen quality. This is necessary, because Dutch stoves and central heating boilers only burn on (low-calorific) Groningen gas. Imported gas is high calorific, with more methane. By mixing nitrogen with it, counterfeit Groningen gas is created. ‘That no longer needs to be obtained from Groningen,’ says Mollink.

Thanks to the nitrogen plant, gas extraction in Groningen could be further reduced this year, from 7.8 to 3.9 billion cubic meters. But: the installation is not ready on time. Moreover, Germany also appears to need 1.1 billion cubic meters of Groningen gas this year. Two weeks ago, just before the new cabinet took office, Gasunie had calculated the consequences. This year will probably require 7.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Groningen. Barely a reduction, and that hurts.

An unwelcome legacy also for the new State Secretary for Mining, Hans Vijlbrief (D66). On Monday, on a visit to Groningen, he was unable to explain exactly why the construction of the nitrogen plant has been delayed. “Then I have to speculate.” Erwin Mollink can explain it. ‘I can never handle all the emotions in this file. And I can’t deny the delay. But perhaps I can create some understanding with an explanation.’

Common denominator: covid

The list of complications is long and crosses all phases of the construction process. The common denominator is covid-19. The installation consists of two parts: a factory with which nitrogen is extracted from the outside air, and a mixing station in which the nitrogen is added to the imported gas. That mixing station, built under the management of Gasunie, has been ready for almost a year now. “That’s waiting.” The completion of the nitrogen installation, outsourced to the specialist company Air Products, with Ballast Nedam as subcontractor, is progressing considerably less well.

The earthquake-resistant design of the installation turned out to be more complex than expected. And then the pandemic broke out in early 2020. The entire Air Products division in India in charge of the calculations was sent home due to a lockdown. Mollink: ‘That meant a delay of more than three months, the slack we had planned.’ Construction started in February 2020, three months later than planned.

The virus subsequently delayed many deliveries of material from China, India, Italy and France, sometimes by more than half a year. Moreover, due to travel restrictions, Gasunie was unable to carry out much quality control in foreign factories, so that defects were only discovered upon delivery in Zuidbroek, resulting in repair work.

The construction site itself was also ravaged by corona. ‘We had to deal with one lockdown after another.’ In addition, for cost and availability reasons, the contractors often work with foreign workers, from Poland and Ukraine, for example. They often live together, close together, resulting in outbreaks with multiple infections.

‘We have also experienced what happened in society’, Mollink summarizes. But if the run-up was already so difficult, wasn’t the warning too late? “There are always ways to catch up. It was only in November that it became clear that we really wouldn’t succeed. A few days later, Minister Blok informed the House of Representatives about the delay.’

Transition road

Driving to the construction site, you pass a large sunbathing lawn with a fan of wind turbines in the background. ‘Transitieweg’, the municipality named the access route with a sense of symbolism. Where in Groningen the energy supply in the past was mainly below the earth’s surface, it will be above ground in the future. The fact that the nitrogen installation is being built in Groningen, says Mollink, is not a statement. ‘This is simply where a great many gas transport pipelines from abroad and in the Netherlands come together.’

Construction of the additional installation at Zuidbroek was already on the agenda in 2015. Then minister Henk Kamp decided that it was not necessary. In retrospect you can conclude that if Kamp had had the same ambition as Wiebes to bring gas production to zero, the factory could have been in operation for two years already. But, defends Mollink: ‘At the time, the State Supervision of Mines deemed it safe to extract 20 billion cubic meters of gas from Groningen. Then this installation would add nothing.’

High on the scaffolding, the workmen cover the shiny piping with insulation material, on the ground floor road plates cover a tangle of cable ducts. ‘About 80 percent of the work has been done’, Mollink estimates. The skeleton has been erected and the organs are in place, but the nerves and blood vessels have yet to be connected. ‘And all at the same time, that makes it complex.’

The factory is now expected to be ready in July or August. But isn’t it quickly redundant? ‘You don’t build a factory like that for two years,’ says Mollink. The Netherlands may be done with Groningen gas, but we are not finished with natural gas yet. ‘The ambitions to make the Netherlands natural gas-free are great, but practice has yet to show how realistic they are.’

If Vijlbrief indeed opts to extract 7.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Groningen this year to fill the winter buffers, gas extraction from Groningen could be put on the proverbial pilot light in October and be stopped completely in two years’ time.

There is, however, one condition: that enough high-calorific gas is imported from abroad. With the geopolitical joust around the international gas transport pipeline Nordstream 2 from Russia and one hundred thousand Putin soldiers on the Ukrainian border, that suddenly does not seem certain. “But if there is no more gas from Russia, we will have an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions throughout Western Europe.”