Dessens’ dual roles in gas extraction in Groningen were complicated

By our editor Claudia Kammer

Representing the interests of the State in gas extraction was always a top priority for him. But safety in Groningen was not his responsibility. That public task was entrusted to the State Supervision of Mines, said Stan Dessens, for many years an important player in the so-called ‘gas building’ in which the oil companies and the State had been collaborating on gas extraction since the 1960s.

Dessens was summoned in The Hague on Wednesday for a four-hour interrogation by the parliamentary committee of inquiry investigating gas extraction. He is seen as an important witness, because in two periods he attended the so-called Maatschap Groningen, the forum of the ‘oils’ and the State in which the most important decisions about gas extraction were taken behind closed doors.

The Partnership was not a “clumsy club” whose members were “guessing” about gas extraction, Dessens said. “On the contrary, it was sometimes tough.” Because it was a ‘marriage of convenience’ between the ‘oils’ and the State, but in the interest of gas extraction, which yielded a lot of money, they always came out together.

Double rolls

Dessens first attended (1988-1999) as a senior official of the Ministry of Economic Affairs at the meetings of the Partnership, later (2006-2017) as a representative of state-owned company EBN. Then he chaired the meetings. At the same time, he was also a supervisory director at GasTerra, the company that had to sell Groningen gas.

Dessens’ double roles were sometimes quite complicated, it turned out on Wednesday. There were things he heard in the Partnership that GasTerra was not allowed to know.

This was especially the case after the severe earthquake in Huizinge in 2012, which caused a lot of damage and concern in Groningen. GasTerra presented the Partnership with a business plan stating that it wanted to sell more gas in 2013 than in 2012. The Committee of Inquiry wanted to know why the Partnership approved that plan and not postpone the decision until there was more clarity about safety in Groningen. The SodM was to come up with a report in the short term, it was rumored that the regulator would argue for a significant limitation of gas production, why was this not waited for a while?

“A diabolical dilemma,” said Dessens. If GasTerra had known that there might be a production limitation, it would have to announce this in accordance with European rules. The time had not come yet: the SodM report had not yet been prepared and the Minister of Economic Affairs – at the time Henk Kamp (VVD) – had not yet made a decision. The Partnership therefore approved the business plan.

Significant interests

In November 2012, the regulator argued in favor of a substantial limitation of gas production, but both the Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM) and the state-owned company EBN opposed this.

“I thought it all went very quickly,” said Dessens. He called for an “extremely careful process” because “very large interests were involved.”

These were both international interests – GasTerra was a ‘crucial player in the European gas market’ and had concluded export contracts worth many billions – and domestic interests: the gas was also necessary for the ‘security of supply’ of the Netherlands.

When in 2013 it became clear in the interim that gas production would amount to approximately 53 billion cubic meters, much higher than in previous years, Dessens thought that was “a thing”, but according to him the responsibility lay “emphatically” with the minister, who had approved it. .

Dessens particularly regrets that he has given ‘insufficient account’ of the ‘subjective sense of security’ of the people of Groningen. “A feeling of insecurity has arisen in Groningen, of concern about home and hearth, and I now say that: that did not concern me enough at the time. I was too much in the groove of: it’s mining damage and we can all fix it.”

The gas file has been a ‘fairy tale’ for years, he concluded his interrogation, ‘but it has become a fairy tale with a bad ending. Nobody imagined it that way.”