By this point, most of you are likely aware that Europe is facing an even more dire energy crisis than the one threatening the United States. The loss of natural gas supplies from Russia is one of the primary drivers of this issue, with sanctions cutting off some avenues of access and mysteriously exploding pipelines impacting others. The good news is that northern Europe has a vast trove of natural gas supplies available in the Groningen field, located in the northeastern part of the Netherlands. It contains enough natural gas to meet nearly all of the region’s needs for some time to come. The bad news is that they are shutting down all gas drilling in the Groningen field, but it’s not because of climate change concerns or protests by Greta Thunberg. They are terminating all natural gas extraction because the process has produced earth tremors. And no… you can’t even make this sort of thing up. (Liberty Unyielding)
Europe faces a critical shortage of energy this winter. It has a big gas field that could replace the natural gas supply it lost due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it won’t use that rich gas field and is shutting it down. Instead, Europe is burning more coal — including dirty lignite coal — and even that won’t be enough to fill unmet needs, due to supply bottlenecks. Coal generates much more pollution than natural gas.
The sprawling Groningen field, beneath the windmill-dotted marshlands of the Netherlands, is Europe’s largest natural gas reserve. It holds enough fuel to replace what Germany once imported from Russia, reported Bloomberg News.
But instead of supporting Europe, as a brutal winter approaches, the field is being shut down, merely because of tremors similar to the tremors that fracking for natural gas produces all the time in states like Oklahoma.
Over… tremors? (No, not the movie about the giant worms.) Apparently so. The Netherlands is citing the measurement of minor tremors in the region where drilling was taking place as a reason to pull the plug.
To be sure, tremors generated by oil and gas extraction – particularly following fracking operations – are a real phenomenon. The extraction of the fuel can leave voids deep under the ground that sometimes collapse, leading to a small tremor. Also, some wells are drilled to dispose of wastewater from the drilling process. The introduction of that water can have a lubricating effect on naturally occurring faults, leading them to slip and create a tremor.
But the reality is that few of the drilling-induced tremors are ever large enough to notice without a sensitive seismometer. The vast majority are lower than magnitude 3. The United States Geological Service notes that a couple of rumblers of this sort have reached above 4.0, but that’s relatively rare and a magnitude 4 tremor is still not likely to do much damage beyond knocking a few glasses off the shelves.
Is that really a reason to shut down one of the richest natural gas reserves in all of Europe? Apparently, it is, at least in the eyes of the European Union. But what are they doing for energy if the Russian supplies are cut off and they refuse to drill for their own supplies? Never fear! They’ve already come up with an answer. They’ve gone back to burning coal.
Yes, that’s right. The coal-fired power plants are being brought back online and they’re even burning lignite coal, which is among the “dirtiest” types of coal in terms of carbon emissions. This is some awfully rich irony. Long before the entire mess with Russia and Ukraine began, the EU was already moving to do away with fossil fuels because of climate change. Coal was among the first sources to go. But now they will shut down their own supplies of natural gas (which is vastly cleaner) and return to burning coal because of a lack of other options. The other choice is to freeze in the dark this winter.
Alexander Bethe, chairman of the Board of the Berlin-based Association of Coal Importers, is quoted as saying that they estimate they will be bringing in at least 33 million tons of coal over the winter. Congratulations, everyone. You wanted to save the planet. And now you’ve clearly hit upon the magic formula to do so. Well done!
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