Netherlands plans to stop gas production at Groningen before schedule

Gas production at the Dutch Groningen field will decline at an accelerated rate. In this regard, the government will seek to fully complete production before 2030, contrary to previous plans, said Minister of Economy and Climate Policy Eric Vibes.

Interfax Global Gas Analytics estimates that production at Groningen in the current gas year, which will end in September, will be about 18 billion cubic meters, compared with 20.1 billion cubic meters in 2017/2018. Deliveries from the field last year were below the official limit of 21.6 billion cubic meters and are likely to be below the threshold set for the current year of 19.4 billion cubic meters.

Production at Groningen has fallen by about 13% on an annualized basis since the beginning of this year, which negatively affected gas production in the Netherlands as a whole.

In the first half of the year, production in the country decreased to about 18.7 billion cubic meters compared to 20.3 billion cubic meters in the same period in 2018. According to the results of the whole last year, production amounted to 38.6 billion cubic meters, which is 12% lower than the indicator for 2017 (43.9 billion cubic meters). For 2019, production is projected at nearly 35 billion cubic meters.

As a result, the Netherlands, the largest producer of natural gas in the European Union and the main center of gas trade and transportation in Europe, became the first net importer of this raw material in 2018.