Before the debate about gas extraction in Groningen only revolves around Mark Rutte: do not forget about these sidetracks, delays and lies

1. Verhagen and Vijlbrief put pressure on the Competition Authority to get a fine off the table

The then Minister of Economic Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen (CDA, Cabinet Rutte-I) has been sent to the Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) by his top civil servant Hans Vijlbrief (now responsible State Secretary for Mining) to ask the NMa ‘ under pressure ‘ to get a mega fine of 425 million euros for GasTerra off the table.

What is interesting about this whole thing is that the competition authority was the responsibility of the Ministry of Verhagen. As a minister, Verhagen should ‘respect the independence of his own supervisor’. But the Ministry of Economic Affairs is also a shareholder in GasTerra, the gas trading house that sells the gas extracted from Groningen.

The visit (which neither the minister nor the top officials can remember anymore) has an immediate effect: the mega fine is off the table. A few days later, officials from the Ministry of Finance write that there was ‘a successful form of influence’ by Deputy Prime Minister Verhagen, who ‘succeeded in getting the NMa to back down’. There is still a warning. The civil servants themselves also feel that ‘the successful intervention’ cannot be accepted. The deal may therefore not be disclosed ‘in the light of the independence of the regulator’.

An internal memo from the Ministry of Finance to the then Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem clearly shows how profoundly the intervention of Verhagen and Vijlbrief worked. Dijsselbloem reads in that memo of 18 March 2013, in preparation for a conversation three days later with ExxonMobil director Joost van Roost and Shell director Dick Benschop, that ‘the parties have previously gotten away with the fine that has been shoved under the rug. […] of 425 million euros imposed by the NMa in 2011 on GasTerra’.

2. The Hague sidelined Hans Alders

On 30 May 2018, National Coordinator Groningen (NCG) Hans Alders sent his resignation letter with seven pages to Minister Eric Wiebes (Economic Affairs and Climate). According to Alders, the minister apparently has ‘less and less confidence in the advice of the NCG, and often has the facts checked by others, including the NAM (which is supposed to be at a distance)’.

The immediate reason for the letter is the fact that the Rutte III cabinet, and Eric Wiebes in particular, cannot agree to the ‘continuation of the reinforcements in full and therefore the implementation of the NCG’s multi-annual program previously adopted by the cabinet will suspend’. Wiebes, although he does not want to call it that himself, presses the pause button and puts Alders on a side track. After all, he had made all kinds of promises in rooms full of worried residents of Groningen.

Social organizations Groninger Gasberaad and the Groninger Soil Movement are anything but satisfied with the actions of Wiebes, who took control from Alders and thus ‘undermined the position of the NCG and minimized the position of the region’. The Groningen region once again feels that it is not being taken seriously by The Hague and the cabinet by unilaterally throwing overboard earlier agreements.

3. Dijsselbloem wanted to fill the treasury with income from additional gas extraction

In 2014, Henk Kamp actually did not want to deviate from the production ceiling advised by the regulator, the State Supervision of Mines (SodM). The regulator stated that a maximum of 40 billion cubic meters could be extracted from Groningen. But how important the gas from Groningen is was for the rest of the Netherlands, according to an email from the then Minister of Finance Jeroen Dijsselbloem (PvdA).

He emails Kamp that he wants at least 42.5 billion cubic meters from Groningen. As a minister in charge of the treasury, Dijsselbloem can make good use of the extra billions of euros. The Netherlands will then be in a deep crisis and Dijsselbloem thinks going back to 42.5 billion cubic meters is already a ‘significant step back’. Kamp feared that regional administrators and ‘Groningen’ would not put up with this, but Dijsselbloem came out on top: it turned out to be 42.5 billion cubic meters. In retrospect, Kamp said during his interrogation, this was “one of three things that he should have done differently” .

It was also Dijsselbloem who thought along with then-minister Eric Wiebes about how closing off the gas tap could be packaged. Because gas extraction accelerated to zero, that could easily go hand in hand with reducing the reinforcement task. That in turn saves money and in this way the other ministers and members of the cabinet could be convinced to agree to the accelerated closing of the tap.

And so it happened: the pause button around the amplification operation was pressed and the whole device came to a standstill. This ultimately led to a lot of frustration among the victims whose house should be reinforced [of niet]. And it can actually be said that the action of Wiebes and the rest of the Rutte III cabinet still reverberates in Groningen to this day.

4. Kamp refused to implement an amendment that was passed

An adopted motion, and later even an amendment (amendment of the law), which would regulate that 200,000 euros would be reserved for test cases against the NAM to arrange that residents of Groningen are assisted in going to court, never materialized. And that while the majority of the House of Representatives embraced the idea of ​​GroenLinks MP Liesbeth van Tongeren. The then minister Henk Kamp refused to sign the amendment because of his own conviction. “I do not think that the Dutch state should subsidize citizens to litigate against the state,” Kamp responded to the committee of inquiry. In doing so, Kamp knowingly disregarded the wishes of the Lower House – in fact his boss. “I didn’t think it was the right thing to do and that’s why I didn’t do it.”

5. The cabinet delayed and delayed the nitrogen installation at Zuidbroek

In 2014 there were plans at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate to build an extra nitrogen installation. There, high-calorific gas or gas from small fields imported via nitrogen injection would be made suitable for Dutch households. The construction of such an extra nitrogen plant would cost about 500 million euros.

Oil companies Shell and ExxonMobil are against and are lobbying vigorously against the factory at the ministry, because ‘they are afraid that the construction of the factory will contribute to the chance that eventually some of the gas from the Groningen field will not be extracted’. In any case, a quick decision is not taken.

In 2016, GasUnie urged the Rutte II cabinet to take a decision. Precisely to have the factory operational on time. On 25 August 2016, Prime Minister Rutte, Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher and Ministers Kamp and Dijsselbloem met to make decisions. The four ministers conclude, among other things, that ‘by building a nitrogen plant, the government is opting for ‘the lower, the better’. This will raise expectations in the region [Groningen] and the House of Representatives and may lead to a request to reduce extraction even further.’

The decision about the factory is then passed on like a hot potato to the next cabinet (Rutte III) (partly because of the costs). The committee of inquiry already concluded that this course of action ‘makes the phasing out of production from Groningen more complex in later years, because the capacity of a nitrogen plant is then sorely lacking in order to further reduce gas extraction in Groningen.’ In 2018, then Minister Eric Wiebes (Economic Affairs and Climate) decided to build a nitrogen installation at Zuidbroek that should be operational in 2022. Due to all kinds of factors, the construction of that plant, necessary to definitively stop gas extraction in Groningen, has still not been completed.

6. In 2013, the House of Representatives was ‘cheated and cheated’ about gas extraction

It is pointed out more than once in the survey report: the House of Representatives, as the highest body within constitutional law in our country, has repeatedly and for years been misled by ministers and cabinets. MPs were not or incorrectly informed. One of the most harrowing cases occurred about the gas extraction of the year 2013 . During the debate with the parliamentary committee of inquiry on Wednesday 12 April, PvdA Member of Parliament Henk Nijboer actually lost track of where he was talking when he heard that in 2013 20 billion cubic meters less gas could easily have been extracted from Groningen. The safety of Groningen was knowingly subordinated to the benefits.

The fact that there had been such a high level of gas extraction (53.8 billion cubic meters) in that very year was necessary according to the then current Rutte II cabinet. Because of the security of supply, gas had to continue to flow from Groningen. It would be irresponsible to reduce gas extraction because “hospitals would otherwise be in danger of closing” and “the elderly in Limburg would be left out in the cold”.

But Bart-Jan Hoevers of the Gasunie stated under oath that “from the point of view of security of supply, no intervention in production at all should not have been an issue. I think it was common knowledge that there were nitrogen plants that could do the necessary,” he said during his interrogation. At no point in late 2012 or early 2013 did the Ministry of Economic Affairs involve Gasunie in the question of whether production limitation from Groningen was possible.

Nijboer and his CDA colleague Agnes Mulder were also members of the House of Representatives in 2012 and 2013. “When I saw the interrogations and heard that it was not the case… I was cheated and cheated,” Nijboer said about the fact that there was enough room to close the gas tap for the safety of the inhabitants of Groningen. “That turns out to be just a lie. Unprecedented in a democracy.”

The CDA member Mulder, who has since left, also felt pressured by the then-incumbent cabinet, she said. Those who listened to her words in the plenary hall felt that she almost wanted to take the irreversible step on behalf of the CDA to pull the plug on the current Rutte cabinet.