Amid a gas shortage, ruling EU morons plan to close the largest gas field in Europe, cuz...wait, what?

Every western nation is being ruled by morons.  (Actually every nation, but the citizens of western nations should know better and should have a way to change rulers.  But of course they no longer do.)

Latest example: The idiots ruling (ruining) the Netherlands have announced that they plan to shut down the largest gas field in the EU.

Wokie: "Wait, that could be because the field is "depleted" (has produced all the gas it can "economically" produce).  Yes, that's probably the reason."  

Nope, it's because the moron appointed as "state secretary for mining"--a  total simpleton named Hans Vijbrief--by the wokie gruberment believes extracting gas from the earth causes earthquakes.  And people who don't know jack about oil and gas production believe him--"cuz he from duh gummint, so he wouldn' lie to us, right?"

See, the government of the Netherlands is really sensitive to earthquakes cuz of that big one back in '75 that destroyed most of the large buildings in the country and killed 6,770 people.  So that's totally understandable, right?

Except all that's horseshit:  there haven't been any earthquakes of any worrisome size in the Netherlands in our lifetimes.  The worst they've recorded in a 5.8 in 1992, and seismologists are absolutely certain that was NOT caused by any drilling or gas production but by an active fault 20 miles below the surface.  

(If you're reasonably well-informed you should know at least roughly how deep most wells are drilled, eh?  Any idea?   Turns out most production is within two miles of the surface.  The scary, dreaded, OMG we're all gonna DIE  "fracking" is usually no deeper.  So oil and gas drilling and fracking has no effect at all on fault activity 20 miles down.)

Now: I grew up in "oil country" and my family has been in the biz for three generations.  I know oil and gas like you know neurosurgery or insurance or particle physics or whatever your area of expertise is.  And where I grew up we had three or four tiny "earthquakes" every day.

The key word there is "tiny."  You couldn't even feel 'em, but sensitive seismometers can detect 'em.  And by math magic, seismologists can tell you within a mile or so how far below the surface they originated.  And it was always 10 or 20 miles deep--WAY below any drilling activity.

And yet whenever the USGS issued a press release saying "we detected a magnitude 3.1 quake at a depth of 17 miles," citizens who knew NOTHING about anything would flood the local TV stations claiming it damaged their house and scared 'em to death!  And blaming oil drilling, or fracking.

Now, the communists who run Wikipedia are TOTALLY on board with this.  They use a cunning term "induced earthquakes" to make people who don't know better believe oil and gas production causes those little, deep quakes.  Take a look:

So yes, since 1986 the Netherlands has experienced about 1,000 micro-quakes.  Wiki:

This event count shows a remarkable exponential growth in time, which would possibly lead to one event per day in 2025. While moderate in magnitude, the sheer number of events acts as a physical stressor to living conditions."

Oooohhh, "exponential growth!"  You're all gonna DIE!  And it's a "stressor to living conditions." Except...at the very end of the 'graf Wiki throws in a line they're not smart enough to grasp the significance of:

After peaking in 2013 the number of induced earthquakes with a magnitude > 1.5 has been decreasing."

(For the math-phobic: a magnitude 1.5 "quake" is about what you'd feel if you were half a mile from a railroad track when a train was passing--i.e. you wouldn't feel a thing.)

But WAIT...drilling and gas production continued at the Netherlands field well after 2013.  So if the micro-quakes were caused by drilling and/or production, shouldn't that "exponential increase" have continued after 2013?

Of course.  But even Wiki notes it didn't.  Doesn't that wreck their scare story?  Sure.  They just don't realize it.  If they had, they wouldn't have told you the quake frequency decreased after 2013.

And note that the Wiki page at the above link does NOT mention the depth at which these micro-quakes originated.  They know, of course, and they know the depth is so great that the quakes can't have been caused by drilling...but they want you to believe the opposite is true, hence their scare term "induced earthquakes"--implying they're caused by drilling or production.

Turns out we actually know the cause of these micro-quakes.  There are actually two causes:  One is "subduction," where one tectonic plate is being overridden by another.  The moving plates "stick" for a few dozen years until enough spring energy builds up, then every so often they slip a bit.  If there's too much sticky, there's enough built-up energy to cause a big quake, like the infamous San Francisco quake of 1906, or Alaska of 1964 or northern Japan of 2011.

But there's also a second cause: high-pressure gas, produced deep within the earth, eventually reaches a pressure high enough to rupture rock strata above it.  The gas bubble then moves up until its pressure drops too low to bust any more rocks.  That's what accounts for the zillions of micro-quakes in oil and gas-producing areas.  

But do ya think you can educate the Dutch "state secretary for mining," (a.k.a. "extractive industries")-- or any government official?  

Hell no.  Not even close.  Those dumb sons of bitches think they know how it all works, and that you and I are dumb deplorable peasants.

The moron Hans Vijlbrief claims it is “very dangerous” to keep operating the gas field.  “We won’t open up more because of the safety issues…. I’m not going to do it because it means that you increase the chances of earthquakes, which I don’t want to be responsible for,” he said.

He goes on: “Everybody who has some knowledge of earthquake danger tells me it’s *very dangerous* to keep on producing [at Groningen]. I’m quite convinced it’s wise to close it down.”

Media to earthquake expert: "Are quakes dangerous?"  Expert:  "Sure."   What the reporter doesn't ask: "Is a magnitude 2 quake dangerous?"  Cuz that would blow up the scare-story.

The Netherlands field reportedly contains another $1 Trillion worth of gas that could still be produced.  At its peak the field produced over 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year.  But lots of "drilling-induced tremors" [bullshit, but the papers wrote it so...] have been registered around Groningen annually since the 1980s, with 160,000 claims filed for damage to property, so no government "minister" would DARE to allow such a ghastly thing to continue, eh?

After Russia invaded Ukraine and Porridgebrain demanded all countries stop buying Russian gas--and then blew up both Nordstream gas pipelines (link)-- the government of the Netherlands postponed plans to shut down the field entirely, but ordered its production cut to 2.8 billion cubic meters per year, for fear of "inducing" more earthquakes, Vijlbrief said.

Before sanctions Russia was by far the largest supplier of gas to Europe.  But with sanctions the amount of Russian gas has been cut to near zero.  Fortunately for the people of the EU, this winter has been a lot warmer than normal, so the disaster that would have otherwise happened has been avoided.  They got lucky.

Source.