News item | 31-03-2023 | 4:45 pm
The cabinet has decided that six of the remaining eleven production locations used to extract Groningen gas will close from 1 April this year. The remaining five remain on the pilot light. State Secretary Hans Vijlbrief (Mining) has announced this.
‘Next step to close Groningen’
State Secretary Vijlbrief: “We now all know the consequences of gas extraction in Groningen. Families have been torn apart, people have died from stress and children have grown up without the carefree childhood they deserve. Much remains to be done. This is the next step to definitively close the Groningen field.”
pilot light
The five remaining production locations remain on the pilot light. In this gas year, which runs from October 2022 to October this year, 2.8 billion cubic meters of gas will be extracted. That is the pilot level. That quantity already took into account that gas would no longer be extracted from six locations from April.
Close permanently
If, in the event of an emergency, the six locations that are closed would have to reopen, it would take about a month to start up. The Groningen field will close next October or in 2024 at the latest. The cabinet will take a final decision before 1 October 2023 about gas extraction in the next gas year. The draft decision will be taken in June.