The Netherlands, the natural gas country
Each year, approximately 80 billion m³ of natural gas is extracted from Dutch
gas fields -an equivalent of about 20% of total European gas supply-, some 120 billion m³ of natural gas is transported through the Dutch transport system and some 45 billion m³ of natural gas is used in the Netherlands for cooking, heating, power generation and as raw material for the industry.
The Netherlands has been a natural gas country since 1963. One of the largest natural gas fields in the world, the Groningen gas field, was discovered under the land of farmer Kees Boon in Kolham in the municipality of Slochteren in 1959.
The discovery of the Groningen field propelled the development of technology for production, transport and application of natural gas. The popularity of natural gas grew rapidly in Europe. The Europeans loved the ease of application and -compared to other fossil fuels- cleanliness of the fumes. The discovery of even more gas fields on its territory gave the Netherlands every reason to become leading in developing expertise in the exploration, production, transport and application of natural gas; The unique gas quality of each new field to come on stream demanded an urgent development of expertise and technology to guarantee the gas to meet the quality requirements set at every delivery point.
The Netherlands maintained this leading role in the development of the value chain of natural gas. To date state-of-the-art technology has been applied to maintain and expand production and transportation facilities to meet the ever-growing demand.
The continuous development of expertise and technology is driven by a continuous need to improve safety, environmental impact and total life-cycle cost. The development of appliances is in addition driven by market and trends.
The oil crises of the 1970’s and 1980’s drove the rapid consciousness of the globally limited volumes of energy. The Dutch government started campaigns to stimulate the efficient use of energy. These campaigns boosted the development of technology to use energy more efficiently.
Today natural gas is brought to the Netherlands from various sources. A true energy market has been created; the vertically integrated energy companies have been unbundled, open and non-discriminatory access to the transport and distribution net works is cast in stone by law and a virtual market place -an energy exchange- is created.
