The Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM) has received the permit to install a carbon filter at the oil extraction installation at Schoonebeek. These filters should make it possible to restart oil extraction and the injection of waste water in due course.
NAM now has to wait for permission from the State Supervision of Mines (SodM) to actually install the filter installation and start pumping oil again.
The Asser oil company stopped extracting oil in Schoonebeek, because it feared losing its permit after discovering small, harmless exceedances of the content of toluene in the waste water. The waste water that is released during oil extraction was injected into the ground in Twente. NAM also stopped doing this in January.
The NAM has already announced that it wants to move the injecting of the waste water to Drenthe. A permit has not yet been applied for, but the action plan for the area has now been started by the ministry.
The filter that will be installed to ensure that the wastewater is safe will be located in Schoonebeek. According to the NAM, the filters will be installed in the coming weeks. The filters are already being built, as soon as they are finished building they are placed.
According to the NAM, the carbon filters have a ‘long life’ and are ‘periodically regenerated’. This means that they are processed in such a way that they can be reused.
It is still unclear when oil extraction in Schoonebeek will be restarted. You can object to the filter permit until 12 October. The permit for filtering waste water runs until December 31 of this year.