Former CEO of oil and gas company ExxonMobil Joost van Roost refuses to come to the parliamentary inquiry committee investigating gas extraction in Groningen, the committee reported on Thursday afternoon. He was summoned by the commission for questioning. The reason for his decision has not been disclosed.
Normally, a parliamentary committee of inquiry can force people who do not show up voluntarily to come to the questioning. However, this is only possible with Dutch citizens – and Van Roost is Belgian.
Also read: How Groningen gas continued to flow under pressure from the oil companies
Damage Groningen
Van Roost worked for ExxonMobil from the 1980s and was CEO of the company in the Benelux from 2000 to 2017. The committee wanted to speak to him about his role during that period. According to the committee of inquiry, Van Roost was “mainly responsible for an important player” in the gas file. The policy on gas extraction was determined in meetings at which the top of Shell, ExxonMobil, NAM and the Dutch State met. Van Roost was there.
Commission chairman Tom van der Lee (GroenLinks) calls it “very disappointing” that Van Roost does not show up. “You really want to hear the main responsible person of an important player yourself,” says Van der Lee. “And that is why it is very disappointing that he remains with a refusal for reasons of his own.” The committee chairman says that he has tried everything to get Van Roost to the interrogation, but that he no longer has any means. “We think he should really be heard by us because he had an important position in a fairly long and crucial period in gas extraction.” It is unusual for someone to refuse to testify before a parliamentary committee of inquiry.
‘game changer’
The public hearings of the parliamentary committee of inquiry will continue next week. These mainly focus on the earthquake in Huizinge in 2012, which with a magnitude of 3.6 was the heaviest ever measured in the province of Groningen. In an earlier interrogation by former Shell CEO Pieter Dekker, this was a “game changer” named.
Next week, the committee will take a technical look at the quake and the damage caused by it, but will also discuss the impact it had on society and on gas extraction policy. Among others, Albert Rodenboog (Mayor of Loppersum from 2003 – 2018), Maxime Verhagen (Minister of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation and Deputy Prime Minister from 2010 – 2012) and Bart van de Leemput (NAM CEO from 2009 – 2014).
One of the things that the Committee of Inquiry is expected to investigate in depth in the longer term is the decision-making process about the amount of gas that was extracted after the severe earthquake in Huizinge. In the years that followed, it did not go down, but instead went up sharply.