Former minister Henk Kamp says in his interrogation by the parliamentary committee of inquiry that he was not aware that gas production could be reduced in 2013. Gas trader GasTerra had calculated that security of supply would not be jeopardized if extraction were to be reduced by almost 20 billion cubic meters to 27 billion cubic meters. The Ministry of Kamp, Economic Affairs, was also aware of this, according to previous interrogations. But Kamp says that he himself was not aware of this.
The long-awaited interrogation of Kamp, just like previous interrogations in recent weeks, focuses mainly on the time after the earthquake in Huizinge in 2012. In that year, 48 billion cubic meters of gas was still extracted. Kamp thought that this amount was also necessary to prevent security of supply from being compromised. In 2013, Kamp decided to extract about the same amount of gas, and eventually the extraction even increased to almost 54 billion cubic meters.
Kamp defends his decision at the time not to reduce gas production, despite the regulator’s plea to do so. There was no consensus on the effect of production reduction, Kamp emphasizes. “I especially did not know a lot of things, not sure or insufficiently. That is why I thought that those investigations had to be done.”