The Dutch are filling gas wells with cement | Hacker News Reader

The Dutch are filling gas wells with cement

siliconcontinent.com

48 pointsGijs4g108 comments

"The government is demolishing the wells to prevent a future government from reconsidering its decision to stop producing gas."

As well they should. This country should be electrifying much, much faster. A place literally below sea level is more invested in stopping climate breakdown than most. Sadly the way they're going about it is really a bad hack, and encourages prolonged gas dependency by subsidizing "hybrid" heat pumps (that still require a gas boiler).

I installed heat pumps last spring and it is frustrating that they didn't qualify for any subsidy because they also happen to be air conditioning. And while I might have been able to get a subsidy for an induction hob, there wasn't much point because the one I got for <€200 has been great, and plugged in to a normal outlet. The only trade off is that I can't run all the burners on max power at the same time, and boiling water is _slightly_ slower then when I had a 6kw one.

Hot water is still an issue though. Heat Pump water heaters seem almost unheard of, and I also worry that if I rip out the radiators and the legacy CV Ketel (which I both hate) then it would affect insurability and resale.

Don’t expect anything to be decided by this cabinet. Springtime elections are pretty certain IMHO

Hopefully we get much better renewables support (and with it lower public transit fares...), fixes for the insane box 3 rules due to come in to effect, yimby reforms to let people actually build homes in cities, and the right to air conditioning enshrined in law...

> As well they should.

Assuming there is no pressing reason and the wells are dormant, why would it be a good idea to destroy options? I did not fact check these claims though. Maybe there are other reasons to close them. But if it is solely do remove them from equation altogether, it is stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precommitment

These are European governments with trillions of dollars of GDPs. They should not be trying to cock block themselves like teenagers in these matters.

Welcome to Europe

Presumably, if technology advances to the point where it is safe to burn fossil fuels again, it will also advance to the point where cement won't stop people from accessing the gas wells.

Looking where USA is and where some EU countries may he going soon (not sure yet, but the risk is there) ... that is why.

Burning fossil fuels is not a real option, it is a threat to all of humanity that it is horrendous we are not doing more to stop.

I agree, if we were run by people good at weighing short vs long term decisions, but we often are not.

That being said, I do worry that that outcome of this isn't "stop using gas" but "keep using American LNG", which would be worse.

Continuing to rely on fossil fuels or use them as a backup is not a serious option.

More Fucked Today Than Yesterday - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49441781 - August 2026

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49425005 (citations)

Gas HAS to be used as a backup for renewables today (or at least in places without good pumped hydro?). Enough batteries to supply an entire grid for a day or two is just out of reach today.

At least in Australia, I'm not sure how the dynamics go with such a geographically diverse grid like Europe.

Yes, certainly, I agree. But, at the same time, we should be electrifying and rapidly deploying storage (both energy and heat) as quickly as possible. "Burn the ships" and commit.

Battery boom brings round-the-clock solar closer, Ember says - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49466337 - August 2026

CATL Secures 2GWh Sodium-Ion Storage Deal with Solarpro for Eastern Europe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49219960 - August 2026

> Solar PV supplied more than 10% of global electricity in the first half of 2026, but generation remains heavily concentrated around midday. Ember says rapidly expanding, cheaper battery storage could shift 34% of new daily solar generation to non-solar hours in 2026, bringing round-the-clock solar closer.

The World Crossed a Major Solar Milestone [3TW] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49151977 - August 2026

UNIGRID's sodium-ion home battery debuts in Europe, US is next - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48867257 - July 2026

Ember Energy: EU gas demand set to drop 7% by 2030, making new gas investments risky - https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/eu-gas-demand-set-to... - June 17th, 2025

> "The government is demolishing the wells to prevent a future government from reconsidering its decision to stop producing gas."

Should there be a reconsideration - they could of course always just drill new wells into the known, proven resource. If they mothballed the existing wells for a few years they would probably need to anyway, or spend piles of money keeping them viable.

Yes, but making it more effort/costlier makes it less likely that it will be done unless there are really compelling reasons to.

They’ll just dig new holes next to the concrete.

You’re just spending money to feel good.

"Just digging new holes" also costs money, and hence the deterrence is still having the intended effect.

Wasting money is the goal.

No, stopping the re-opening is the goal. Making people waste money if they want to is the means.

> As well they should.

Because pouring millions of tons of concrete to the ground is very environment friendly.

The subsidies are a scam that make construction companies more wealthy, there has hardly been a drop in the price you eventually pay imho. I insulated my entire house myself... No subsidy. Ah well, it is more comfortable (though partly we are exchanging the ability to stay warm in winter with that of staying cool in summer), but to say I really notice that we use much less gas... Not really actually. Strange right? I expected much more from it.

Insulation helps with both staying warm and cool, though. After all, a big foam beer cooler is just a hollow box of insulation.

I think for a lot of Dutch houses the real issue is draftiness. No amount of insulation fixes that. Hell, the windows have required vents that can't really be closed properly installed per code. I thought the previous owners were quirky but then noticed _all_ the houses have these weird vents at the top of some windows.

Yep. Forced to insulate but also have ventilation which undoes the isolation.

Also isolation is great unless you open a window xD

Yes but... check the CO2 levels when you close the vents, and watch the water flow from your windows, and see the mold grow on the north wall.

Also, isolation keeps out the heat... Until it is inside, then it keeps it there. I agree it makes air condition more economical, but not many people have them (yet, it's booming).

True, if your house is actually hotter than outdoor temps (so in the evening if your house was roasting all day).

Awnings and window shades are really important here. It's insane we don't have every south facing window with an exterior cover.

It wasn't that insane when our summer nights were 24 degrees C instead of 29, what a difference that makes.

Modern-ish houses have mechanical ventilation, then you don't need vents. Old houses don't, so you need to get ventilate the passive way.

Part of the reason for the ventilation requirements is due to burning fossil fuels in the home for heat and cooking.

You can ventilate a little less when you're generating less pollution in the home.

Some ventilation is still a good idea though.

"Some ventilation is still a good idea though."

I think a CO2 meter is an excellent idea, imho it is a good proxy for "air freshness", so also small particles etc. This year I want to try to ventilated more based on CO2 (so close the vents until CO2 becomes unacceptable) and monitor gas use (hooray for Home Assistant).

There's been research showing that high "acceptable" CO2 causes drop in cognitive abilities.

The gas is primarily used to generate electricity. Where do you suggest the electricity for their electrification comes from?

Mythical future technology it seems

Nuclear, wind and solar are all pretty old at this point.

Hell, Nuclear is 1940's technology. Are you telling me that the famously industrious Dutch are unable to produce energy without pumping gas out of Groningen?

wind, solar, batteries, perhaps nuclear.

Destroying own wells only to import gas does nothing to reduce the carbon footprint (it's actually increases it if you'll account emissions from LNG tankers). Efforts should be directed into non-carbon generation and electrification. And if it will be competitive there will be little incentives for the next government to restart the production.

Cool, did you let China know about it?

Other "fun fact" it seems the Netherlands uses gas cooktops much more than other European countries.

Yeah, they're pretty close-minded about cooking. In more ways than one.

My parents in France replaced their 40 year old gas boiler with a heat pump 5 years ago, half subsidized by the government, then replaced their gas range with induction and got rid of gas altogether. This includes hot water (using a tank). They pay less thanks to France’s cheap nuclear power, help wean the country off foreign energy from unreliable or hostile countries and does good for the environment. What’s not to like?

Yes, but contrary to the Netherlands, France has an electrical network that is able to cope much better with the demand of heat pumps, as many houses have traditionally been heated by electricity.

If anything, using more energy-efficient heat pumps might even decrease the load on the network.

European grid is linked together. That's one of the significant points of single market. Netherlands can use French electricity.

No, the problem is that the Dutch grid cannot cope with its own internal demands.

https://dutchtimes.nl/business/connection-ban-in-utrecht-sig...

https://nltimes.nl/2026/02/12/grid-operator-warns-overload-u...

https://nos.nl/artikel/2611522-vol-stroomnet-utrecht-is-een-...

Having just added airco in NL I do worry about this - I actually suspect we could get a _long_ ways with more intelligent timing around power use. Your car can wait to charge while your hob boils a pot of water, etc. House batteries can help a lot with this too of course.

If it's only airco it's perhaps not too bad, as your airco usage will most often be aligned with good solar capacity, and you can compensate with solar panels. (if that's possible for you...)

For solar, starting next year, you'll get less and less money for the energy you give back to the net, so you might as well us it and store it for yourself instead of letting the energy shareholders get rich with your production.

If your unit is also to be used as heat pump, well.. ..things look bleaker globaly in the Netherlands.. Especially if more and more people step over from gas to electric. No sun + cold wave (and therefore an inefficient heat pump) is going to put some people in the cold..

A smarter network could help, if the investments were sufficient. But the problem has been known since the early 2000s, and nothing has been done about it until recently.

I've never found a coherent explanation of what this problem is, as an outsider looking in.

It roughly matches the shape of the American datacenter issue where an uptick in demand that is small compared with the level of extra demand required for EVs and heat pumps and industrial electrification to decarbonise the economy has apparently caused massive problems.

And also the Australian experience where the grid companies would rather curtail solar than sell it cheaply (often because the same companies profit from evening gas prices).

You are then forced to conclude that there was simply no coherent plan for electrification. Decades of planning time utterly squandered.

Probably spent arguing about whether climate change was real.

During my holidays this summer I met, by happenstance, an expert specialized in forecasts modeling, who has been involved in this very problematic, advising the dutch government.

He told me that the problem had been forecast and known since the early 2000s, and that basically nothing was done about it until very recently (think less than 5 years).

The problem was made worse with the privatization of the electricity network, as the incentive to invest in primary net infrastructure was very low.

So it's the classical case of a known problem with no will to invest, combined with successive governments that wash their hands saying "it's privatized, we cannot interfere". (so also with no will to invest)

The problem was foreseen, the plans were made and proposed with actionable steps and real deadlines, and nothing was done because the costs were too high.

And now the short-to-medium term prognosis is bleak, with blackouts a real possibility.

Hmmm. Reminds me of 1999, when I worked for Dutch ISP EuroNet Internet BV, and the legacy telco KPN claimed it did not have capacity on its phone network and needed at least 2 years to connect our modems. Odd that a country whose very existence is predicated on keeping its dam/polder network running, something which has led to a very Japanese-like culture of consensus, allowed such critical networks as the electric grid or phone network to rot.

I have a heat pump system, the hot water works alright.

The only minor issue is during winter months, if the daughter and the wife shower one right after the other, it takes some 40 minutes for the boiler to have hot water again.

Is this a heat pump water heater? That's interesting since they should have a very large tank but also take more than 40 minutes to heat up, usually. A backup resistive element could make this faster of course.

It is. It serves both for heating the radiators and for the warm water in the sinks/shower/dishwasher/laundry, but I understand both to be separated systems fed by the same heat pump.

The boiler is not huge, but it has enough water for 2 or 3 people showering in a row, depending on how quickly that happens and what other things sre using hot water now.

It doesn't take super long to have hot water again, but it depends on how cold it is outside. On colder days it obviously take longer.

This was done for mostly ideological reasons, "green transition" and such. The Dutch economy was dependent on natural gas sales for funding parts of the welfare state. They became a net importer of natural gas and then Ukraine and Iran made the gas prices spike. So the Dutch government is now struggling to fill the natural gas store for household heating and cooking applications for the coming winter season, while also incurring these high costs. The impact hasn't fully played out or understood.

The impact for me is double gas prices compared to a couple of years ago. About 300€ a month, year round.

But be fair with us: are you holding back on investing in other forms of heating due to non-financial reasons? (I am. We use a bit less gas than you, but I am looking for another house and unwilling to transition even though I can afford it and it seems profitable.)

Currently I can't afford it tbh (it's like a couple of 1000 and only makes sense with solar panels?), but that may change soon. Still I wonder if it is cheaper? Electricity in winter is still very expensive and soon generated solar power is near worthless and we can't store it for the winter.

I admit I still have to do the exact math (for which I am in a good position with years worth of Home Assistant data).

If I had money to spare I'd be more idealistic about it really, also because I have a solar-panels + home battery shaped hole in my HA dashboard that hurts me ;)

While everyone knows that welfare state should be dependent on taxing the absurdly rich instead of on gas sales.

Until the "absurdly rich" (read: this starts barely above middle class) start going away

I always knew Europe had high taxes, but when I lived in Ireland I was shocked that the top tax rate kicks in at the princely sum of €44,000 a year.

No. The government should just use tax to create investment funds. Then make it a law that only 50% of profit can be used, the rest needs to be reinvested.

It’s moronic that taxes don’t always go down. The government should make money and get a job instead of living off welfare.

For some reason people get mad about the state owning productive assets.

I agree with the ideological part of it. But the Dutch economy or governement was perhaps “dependant” on the revenues in the 80s (peak at >15% of gov exp), but in recent years it was more like 1%. The strategic concern is not primarily a financial concern.

I generally don’t believe in conspiracies, but not filling the strategic reserves for next winter (each year after the energy shock of a few years ago, they fill the gas storage less) looks like a way to scare the populace into making the electric transition via a government made supply shock.

Nah filling is just dependent on private companies and they aren’t willing to pay the high prices now.

The government is now going to fill it themselves to levels required for the harshest winter in 30 years. And tax the population to fill it to this completely unnecessary level.

The same has happened in the UK. It has gone from being a major producer of oil and gas to being heavily dependent on imports.

Great for politicians on the global speaking circuit to opine how they reduced production and brought down local carbon emissions whilst completely ignoring that offshoring industry means the emissions just happen somewhere else (typically a poorer country with lower/no environmental standards).

Hardly seems to fit with the “we’re all in this together” argument.

Right wing selling off national assets on the cheap: good Left wing blocking off national assets: bad

> Hardly seems to fit with the “we’re all in this together” argument.

It's a good job we offset all of our manufacturing to the likes of China, it's not like they have terrible environmental standards or share an atmosphere with us or anything. It's also a good job we closed our coking coal rich mines to import it from Japan instead [1].

I'm left in utter disbelief that any of this was allowed or condoned, it is nothing short of madness. The UK now finds itself in a position where it is incapable of doing absolutely anything.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp311nr7w34o

Well, it's not like the idea of the UK being a "major producer of oil and gas" is a feasible long-term strategy anyway.

> It has gone from being a major producer of oil and gas to being heavily dependent on imports.

You seem to be suggesting this happened for reasons other than extracting and selling all the oil and gas that was there, while also stalling on any domestic moves to burn less fuel, leading to the obvious imbalance.

Even the oil industry when they show graphs of what they describe as "unrealistic" options which involve massive cuts in taxation are only tiny speed bumps on the way to exhausting the reserves.

Meanwhile a single round of wind turbine auctions will save far more gas than that. And be a "green transition".

> It has gone from being a major producer of oil and gas

Given that North sea oil is a finite resource that has already peaked, it cannot form the basis of a long term energy strategy.

Can you please replace Ukraine with Russia?

> Ukraine and Iran made the gas prices spike

Replace Ukraine with Russia and Iran with USA

How is the green transition ideological?

Because it sure as heck isn't pracrical.

Renewable energy: yes, please. Forcing it and tanking the economy, creating poverty: absolutely not.

https://i.imgur.com/ENQjfdo.jpeg

Pretty hard to have a strong economy when half the randstad is under water. Not to mention crop failures, war, etc.

This was done for mostly ideological reasons, "green transition" and such.

The area is sinking. Literally:

"The pressure decline in the field causes compaction in the reservoir which is observed as subsidence at the surface."

https://piahs.copernicus.org/articles/372/367/2015/piahs-372...

This is just not true. The gas wells caused (and still cause) earthquakes in the Groningen province, peoples homes got damaged, this became political, now gas from Groningen is being phased out.

My opinion is that this is stupid, we have billions of euros of gas in the ground and the house damage is overblown.

I think it was a Russian (or American?) psy op. Europe would be almost self-sufficient with the Dutch and Norwegian fields so they had to be shutdown. All while the storage is at historical lows

https://ned.nl/nl/gasopslagen-nederland#:~:text=Verloop%20va...

European self-sufficieny in oil products peaked in the 1990s around 65%

Never high enough for self sufficiency without major changes that the people close to the money spigot delayed for decades to line their own pockets.

Another resource curse.

Ok not 100% self-sufficient. But Norway is producing 3x as much gas now as in the 90s. Gas use to be a waste product almost

As a Dutch person I can confirm this article is: 1) Roughly correct chronologically. 2) COMPLETELY devoid of the actual political reasons behind this being done.

Which are? (Brit here asking though curiosity)

Since you're British just imagine finding gas in Northern Scotland (on land, not on sea!) but control over it is in London.

Imagine how that would roughly unfold over a period of 70 years.

Sorry, I'm on mobile and it's a complex issue. This covers a lot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field#Phasing_ou...

Then, please, tell us what you think the political reasons are behind this being done??

If the local population saw more of the economic benefits, was taken more seriously when they complained about earth quake risk, and was compensated more readily when the earth quakes resulted in actual damage, then maybe they would have been more willing to allow the gas fields to exist as a strategic reserve.

As it stands the local population has little more to show for it than demolished homes and damaged monuments and having an economic disease named after them.

I agree. The Dutch government still has a pretty sinister way of using divide and conquer against parts of society (NOx, Groningen / gas, Tata, ‘Toeslagen’; further back: closing of the mines, Indonesia). Our government finds it very hard to govern in compliance with the rules it made for themselves. Perhaps the nature of a complex system and also a general democratic phenomenon. But there is something typically Dutch in just not being able to fix a problem in the way the administration works.

> The remaining reserves, some 500 billion cubic metres, are worth around €200 billion at current wholesale prices – enough to pay every single resident of the province €150,000 as compensation and still have 110 billion euros.

So... not enough to buy them homes in Amsterdam and move their factories/schools/jobs? Good thing the citizens fought this. The activity is not economical without seriously endangering your home. I'd bet that if you were willing to give them a good enough deal, most/many people will take it. But there is no good deal here. It's just a collection of wealth (gas) at the expense of the Groningeniens.

It's not just earthquakes, the area is literally sinking below sea level.

https://piahs.copernicus.org/articles/372/367/2015/piahs-372...

50cm by 2080! Campi Flegrei next to Naples had 1.5m uplift since 2005.

The average elevation of Groningen province is maybe 100 cm

"It would be good for the current Dutch government to prioritize the interests of the Netherlands and Europe over that of Groningen"

I mean, what the actual f*ck. I LIVE in Groningen and see the results of endless money grabbing of selling the gas of the past decades every day (Shell & the government). People stressed out, thousands of homes that are unsafe, people living in temporary housing for years.

He compares italian earthquakes with ours (we had one last week). This comparison is so wrong on so many levels. First: these ones here a man induced, which is a different category. Second: the soil here is so much different than in Italy, a earthquake with the same force (richter) has a whole different outcome.

My house has (minor) damage as well, I'm compensated for fixing it and I'm happy with the way the government handled it. But this piece of a BS blog and the conclusion are infuriating.

Did the writer even try to speak to anyone living in this region? Or did he just draw some conclusions based behind his desk that's (safely) located in the US?

People are also stressed because of high gas prices, cold swimming pools and offices (19 degrees), industries closing down (chemical sector declined 20% 2022-2023). And not just in Netherlands either

> Destroying the wells does not change the likelihood of additional earthquakes.

Well, it does, because it reduces the chance of additional gas extraction in those areas—which was the goal of filling them with cement.

> Rather than buy off the Groningers, the cabinet decided to give in to them

This doesn't seem to have been tried. We have similar conversations about e.g. pylons for renewable infrastructure and, at even more heightened levels, data centers. It doesn't seem that bribing people to shut up - sorry, sharing the widespread economic benefits of a decision with those most affected - is on the table at all.

At the same time the Dutch gas reserves are at a historic low (current somewhere around 44% of capacity) and are not expected to be filled to capacity before winter comes. It is to be hoped this will be a mild winter or prices - already high - will go through the roof.

Here's an idea for those subsiding gas wells: pump in CO2 on one side, out CH4 the other. That way the pressure is kept up and there should be fewer problems with earthquakes. Someone probably thought of this and decided it wasn't feasible or did not fit the agenda of phasing out fossil fuels like natural gas.

I'm sure that'll work with gases

This article is so biased I can't even.

€150,000 as compensation seems damn low if the biggest investment of median citizen is paying for a house taking far more than that.

Still a waste of resources to sabotage pipes that could just as well serve other purposes.

Didn't the decisions of past generations lead us to the climate issues we have today? Won't future generations also say the same about our decisions? Why permanently destroy assets that future generations could potentially use when they discover how to make it more environmentally friendly? Seems very shortsighted to me; like we know better than anyone else and our views will never be questioned.

Is this to try and prevent subsidence and tremors? It would make sense in a country which is often beneath sea level.

I thought it was mostly to demonstrate that they are REALLY never to be reopened, after many years of your typical lies and empty promises from politician.

It's specifically to prevent the wells being re-opened and thereby raise the cost of re-exploiting the field. Of course, it would always be possible to drill new wells.

This is so funny my own government shoots itself economically in it's foot. Then they love to complain about unfair disadvantage of other countries especially a very big Asian country. When the economic competition from Asia becomes to much to handle.

You just have to laugh or else you would cry..

Without knowing anything about these gas wells, couldn't they be used for compressed air energy storage?

Well, the reservoirs are still full of gas.

CAES is I think now no longer competitive with batteries, which are a much simpler setup and being widely, quietly, deployed.

> destroying them doesn't do anything for safety or the environment.

This is correct because cement is not an adequate plug for well decomissioning. Cement cracks and erodes due to groundwater aggressivity, heat stress and other stresses. Over time will lead to leakages. A better alternative would be expansive clays like bentonite but a far more costlier exercise.

Honestly, “The earthquakes they experienced so far weren’t bad enough” doesn’t sound like a good argument for “let’s keep pumping”. All it takes to make this not worth it is a single bad one.

Plugging wells is a reasonable safety measure. The U.S. is full of leaking wells causing serious air pollution issues.

The writer of this hasn't even talked to any of the local population who have been subjected to these earthquakes that destroys the local populations' houses.

Historically, the Dutch government has done extremely little to compensate the Groningers' damage. The Dutch are considered a bad example with regards to how the government is handling the proceeds of fossil fuels. So subjecting anyone to another round of house-destroying earthquakes is surely going to be well compensated this time. /s

Such a shame ! The Netherlands could have followed Norway and store CO2. The CO2 will be useful carrier for hydrogen, to build methanol out of the electrolysers installed in Groningen. Liquid energy carrier are useful because they are easier to handle than gaseous or liquid (cryo-cooled) hydrogen, for application like ocean going vessel.

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