Europe's self induced energy crisis

Jazz Shaw:

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.

...

The alleged tremors are overrated events.  Somehow, fracking in the US does not lead people to shut down a vital industry.   It is certainly a better way of dealing with Russia energy cuts than burning coal.

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